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The Book-Lover's Library. 

Edited by 
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. 



NEWSPAPER REPORTING 



IN OLDEN TIME AND TO-DA Y 



BY 



JOHN PENDLETON 

Author of "A History of Derbyshire," etc., etc. 



A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 BROADWAY 
1890 




" They were passing through the Strand as they talked, and by 
a newspaper office, which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters 
were coming out of the place, or rushing up to it in cabs ; there 
were lamps burning in the editors' rooms, and above, where the 
compositors were at work, the windows of tlie building were in a 
blaze of gas. 

" 'Look at that, Pen,' Warrington said. " l There she is — the 
great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every 
quarter of the world — lier couriers upon every road. Her officers 
march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen' s 
cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, 
at this minute, giving bribes at Madrid; and another inspecting 
the price of potatoes at Covent Garden. Look, here comes the foreign 
express galloping in. They will be able to give news to Downing 
Street to-morrow ; funds will rise or fall, fortunes be made or lost; 
Lord B. will get up, and holding the paper in his hand, and seeing 
the noble Marquis in his place, will make a great speech ; and— 
and Mr. Doolan will be called away jrom his supper at the back 
kitchen ; for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the 
newspaper sheet before he goes to his own.' " — From " The History 
■of Pendennis," by William Makepeace TJuxckeray. 



Gift of 

S a m • ■ e 1 H ay iv a uf f ' mann 



26 MAR 1907 



Control 



Number 




tm P 96 031011 



3o? 



PREFACE. 



|®gSji7^ English Press is, in our 
I ihLBBI own day, whatever it may 
have been in the past, of 
great interest to the English people. 
It is their chronicler ; its work is 
to give a reflex of their daily lives 
— of their enterprise in commerce, 
of their industry \ of their government, 
of their struggle for a nobler social 



vi Preface. 

condition* of tlieir happiness and 
misery. The English Press has had 
far more to do with the true making 
of this land than the horde of ancestors 
to whom the credit has been given ; 
for, notwithstanding its faults \ the Press 
has done much towards lifting England 
out of the darkness of prejudice and 
ignorance. How it did it will some 
day be written; but this little book 
makes no pretension even to dip into 
such a task. It is not a history of 
journalism. It is not a history of 
shorthand. It deals simply with tlie 
Newspaper Reporter and his toil y 



Preface. vii 

pointing out how and under what 
conditions he does his work as the 
daily historian of the time. Consider- 
ing the variety of that work> the many 
pliases of society with which the 
reporter becomes familiar, and the 
strange incidents inseparable from his 
career \ the story of his journalistic life 
should not be unattractive either to 
tlie ordinary reader or to the book- 
lover, especially as it contains many 
references to the quaint literature of 
the past, and indicates the change 
in the mode of recording events 
since the time when the old-fashioned 



viii Preface. 

news-letter became neglected, and 
its place better filled by that new 
friend, instructor, and critic — the 
daily newspaper. 



Manchester, 

March 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Reporting in Olden Time i 



CHAPTER II. 
The Reporter in Parliament . . 29 

CHAPTER III. 
Incidents and Traditions of "The 

Gallery" . . . . -47 

CHAPTER IV. 
Reporting To-Day in " The House " . 75 



x Contents. 



CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

A Gossip about Shorthand . . .119 



CHAPTER VI. 
The Reporter's Work 143 

CHAPTER VII. 

Some Experiences* and Adventures of 
Reporters 161 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Writings on Newspapers and Re- 
porters 203 

Index 231 



I. 

Reporting in Olden Time. 



NEWSPAPER REPORTING. 



CHAPTER I. 
Reporting in Olden Time. 



|tf5jf£5jjjH ERE have been reporters in 
1&89 nearly all ages of the world, for 
pmjTjtl its people have always been 
characterised by insatiable curiosity — by an 
eagerness for news. The modern reporter 
— the self-reliant gentleman who dashes 
along Fleet Street at midnight in a hansom 
to a big fire, or drives rapidly to St. Pancras 
or King's Cross to catch the north express 
on * his way to some disaster in Yorkshire 



4 Newspaper Reporting. 

— is simply a development of the news- 
gatherer of centuries ago. The craft is an 
ancient one ; indeed, it . has been main- 
tained that there were reporters at the siege 
of Jericho — facile penmen who described 
the blowing of the trumpets by the priests, 
the shouts of the people, the fall of the 
walls, and the destruction of the city by 
fire. This contention certainly is credit- 
able to the reporter's imagination, whatever 
may be thought of its veracity. But it is 
more reasonable to assert that there were 
reporters in Rome during the sway of the 
Caesars ; that when Venice was in her glory 
reporters sped along the water-ways in 
gondolas, or sauntered near St. Mark's, 
collecting the light and learned gossip of 
the city ; and that scarcely had printing 
got a foothold in England than reporters 
began their tireless search after facts — a 
search that they are still continuing with 
marvellous zeal, ingenuity, and ability, in 



Reporting in Olden Time. 5 

the face of difficulties that would daunt 
many men, but only nerve them to further 
effort. 

In his preface to the Gentleman's Maga 
zine in 1 740, Dr. Johnson says : " Every- 
body must allow that our newspapers (and 
the other collections of intelligence periodi- 
cally published), by the materials they 
afford for discourse and speculation, con- 
tribute very much to the emolument of 
society ; their cheapness brings them into 
universal use; their variety adapts them to 
every one's taste : the scholar instructs him- 
self with advice from the literary world ; 
the soldier makes a campaign in safety, 
and censures the conduct of generals with- 
out fear of being punished for mutiny ; the 
politician, inspired by the fumes of the 
coifee-pot, unravels the knotty intrigues of 
Ministers ; the industrious merchant ob- 
serves the course of trade and navigation ; 
and the honest shopkeeper nods over the 



6 Newspaper Reporting. 

account of a robbery % and the price of 
goods till his pipe is out. One may easily 
imagine that the use and amusement of 
these diurnal histories render it a custom 
not likely to be confined to one part of 
the globe or one period of time. The 
Relations of China mention a gazette 
published there by authority, and the 
Roman historians sometimes quote the 
Acta Diurna, or Daily Advertiser, of that 
Empire." 1 

Of bygone reporting in China little is 
known. Probably the celestial recorders of 
current events had enough difficulty in 
deciphering the characters of their mystic 
longhand without rashly venturing upon a 
system of phonography; but either a very 

1 The Acta Dt'urna, the daily journals of the time, 
recorded even the commonest events in the city, 
were written under the direction of the magistrates, 
and placed, with other documents of public interest, 
in the Hall of Liberty. 



Reporting in Olden Time. y 

abbreviated system of longhand or a crude 
style of shorthand was early known in 
Rome, inasmuch as writers " were em- 
ployed by Cicero to take down verbatim 
the speech of Cato in the debate in the 
Senate on the trial of those who had 
been concerned in the Catiline conspiracy." 
And of general reporting — such as para- 
graphs relating to important events — there 
are numerous examples in the Acta Diurna. 
For instance, there are several interesting 
specimens, translated into our own tongue, 
and given by Dr. Johnson in the Gentle- 
man's Magazine^ of the work of the Roman 
reporter in olden time : — 

A. U. C, i.e. from the Building of 
Rome, 585. 

5th of the Kalends of April. 
The Fasces with Aimilius the Consul. 
The Consul, crowned with laurel, sacrificed 



8 Newspaper Reporting. 

at the Temple of Apollo. The Senate 
assembled at the Curia Hostilia about the 
eighth hour; and a decree passed that the 
praetors should give sentence according to 
the edicts which were of perpetual validity. 
This day M. Scapula was accused of an 
act of violence before C. Baebius, the 
praetor; fifteen of the judges were for 
condemning him, and thirty-three for ad- 
journing the cause. 

4TH OF THE KAL. OF APRIL. 

The Fasces with Licinius the Consul. 

It thundered, and an oak was struck 
with lightning on that part of the Mount 
Palatine called Summa Velia, early in the 
afternoon. A fray happened in a tavern at 
the lower end of the Banker's Street, in 
which the keeper of the Hog-in-Armour 
Tavern was dangerously wounded. Tertinius, 
the ^Edile, fined the butchers for selling 



Reporting in Olden Time. . 9 

meat which had not been inspected by the 
overseers of the markets. The fine is to 
be employed in building a chapel to the 
Temple of the goddess Tellus. 

Pridie Kal. Aprilis. 
The Fasces with Licinius. 

The Latin festivals were celebrated, a 
sacrifice performed on the Alban Mount, 
and a dole of raw fish distributed to the 
people. A fire happened on Mount Ccelius ; 
two trisulas and five houses were consumed 
to the ground, and four damaged. Demi- 
phon, the famous pirate, who was taken by 
Licinius Nerva, a provincial lieutenant, was 
crucified. The red standard was displayed 
at the Capitol, and the Consuls obliged the 
youth who were enlisted for the Mace- 
donian war to take a new oath in the 
Campus Martius. 



10 Newspaper Reporting. 

Kal. April. 

Paulus, the Consul, and Cn. Octavius, 
the praetor, set out this day for Macedonia, 
in their habits of war, and vast numbers of 
people attending them to the gates. The 
funeral of Marcia was performed with 
greater pomp of images than attendance of 
mourners. The Pontifex Sempronius pro- 
claimed the Megalesian plays in honour of 
Cybele. 

5th of the Kal. of September. 

M. Tullius Cicero pleaded in defence of 
Cornelius Sylla, accused by Torquatus of 
being concerned in Catiline's conspiracy, 
and gained his cause by a majority of five 
judges. The Tribunes of the Treasury were 
against the defendant. One of the praetors 
advertised by an Edict that he should put 
off his sittings for five days upon account 
of his daughter's marriage. C. Caesar 



Reporting in Olden Time. 1 1 

set out for his government of the farther 
Spain — having been long detained by his 
creditors. A report was brought to Ter- 
tinius the praetor, whilst he was trying causes 
at his tribunal, that his son was dead. 
This was contrived by the friends of Cop- 
ponius, who was accused of poisoning, that 
the praetor in his concern might adjourn the 
court ; but that magistrate having discovered 
the falsity of the story, returned to his 
tribunal, and continued in taking informa- 
tions against the accused. 

This is reporting to the point. It is true, 
it is terse, it is candid. The representatives 
of the Acta Diurna understood the art of 
condensation, and they possessed not only 
a graceful style, but an independent spirit. 
In these days the Press has great license, 
and says many bold things, but few modern 
editors would pass a sentence like this in the 
obituary notice of any prominent man : — 



12 Newspaper Reporting. 

"The funeral of Marcia was performed 
with greater pomp of images than attend- 
ance of mourners." 

It certainly reads strangely, and is a 
curious contrast to the attitude of the 
British Parliament years later, that Julius 
Caesar during his consulship ordered the 
publication of the diurnal acts of the Senate 
and the people. He does not appear to 
have either harassed or insulted the re- 
porters ; nor did any member of the Senate 
venture to use language such as Sir Thomas 
Winnington uttered against the reporter 
Edwin Cave and his associates in the House 
of Commons, on April 13th, 1738. "You 
will have," said Sir Thomas, "every word 
that is spoken here by gentlemen misrepre- 
sented by fellows who thrust themselves into 
our gallery ; you will have the speeches of 
the House every . day printed, even during 
your session, and we shall be looked upon 
as the most contemptible assembly on the 



Reporting in Olden Time, 1 3 

face of the earth." Nor does Julius Caesar, 
though he was not exactly a pattern of 
lovingkindness and tender mercy, appear to 
have subjected the Press to such indignity 
as our own Lord Marchmont, on whose 
motion in the House of Lords, in November 
1759, the proprietor of the Gazetteer was 
compelled to apologise on his knees at the 
bar of the House for reporting that the 
thanks of Parliament had been given to Sir 
Edward Hawke for his victory ! 

The Acta Diurna contained many of the 
features that make our own newspapers 
attractive. They noticed not merely im- 
portant but trivial events, such as, "A stage- 
play was acted, this day being sacred to 
Cybele." They gave accounts of murders, 
trials, punishments, elections, marriages, 
sacrifices, processions, imposing spectacles, 
the feats of foot-races, the encounters of 
gladiators, and the gossip of the time; but 
apparently they had not realised the value 



14 Newspaper Reporting. 

of two items of modern news that never 
grow stale — the perennial account of the 
centenarian who can read without spectacles 
and retains his faculties to the last, and the 
thrilling story of the slippery sea-serpent that 
has successfully defied capture for the past 
century. , 

The actuarii, the Roman reporters, had 
comparatively little use for their stenography 
after Caesar's death. The privilege of pub- 
lishing the Acta Diurna was withdrawn ; and 
from this period until the early part of the 
sixteenth century newspapers, so far as can 
be ascertained from available records, were 
practically dead. But in a letter dated 
Rome, September 15 13, from the Cardinal 
of York to Henry VIII., about "The Battle 
of the Spurs," occurs this passage: "After 
this newes afforesaide was dyvulgate in the 
citie here;" and Chalmers, the author of 
The Life of Ruddiman, says there were news- 
sheets in Augsburg and Vienna in 1524. 



Reporting in Olden Time. 1 5 

But he admits that "the first modern sheet 
of news " appeared in Venice about the year 
1536, that it was in manuscript, and was 
read aloud in certain parts of the city — a 
journal that proved a great attraction, for it 
was only issued once a month, and narrated, 
in polished stirring words, how the Vene- 
tians fared in their war against Turkey. 
The fee paid for reading this sheet in manu- 
script was a gazzetta, and the news-sheet 
gradually got the name of the coin. At 
least, Blount, in his Glossographia, pub- 
lished in the seventeenth century, would 
lead one to this conclusion, giving as the 
definition of the word gazzetta, " A certain 
Venetian coin, scarce worth one farthing ; 
also a bill of news, or short relations of the 
occurrences of the time, printed most com- 
monly at Venice, and thence dispersed every 
month in most parts of Christendom." 

It was not until 16 12 that the gazzettas of 
the Venetians first appeared as numbered 



1 6 Newspaper Reporting. 

sheets ; but some years previously the thirst 
for news — now well-nigh unquenchable in 
every civilised part of the globe — had spread 
to England. The rich man retained a news- 
writer, really " our own reporter " of the time, 
who sent any interesting intelligence he could 
obtain in the form of a letter to his patron. 
But in 1588 the poor as well as the rich 
thirsted for news. The Spaniards, flushed 
with conquest and swaggering with success, 
were crowding on all sail to our shores. 
Queen Elizabeth had bidden them defiance ; 
there was anxiety, but not cowardice, in 
every English home ; the beacon fires 
glowed brightly on the hill-tops, but there 
was a fiercer glow of desperate courage in 
the hearts of our men both at home and 
on the sea, and every scrap of news about 
the sailors who had gone out under Drake 
and Frobisher to check the Armada was dis- 
cussed in chimney corner by every fireside 
in the land. It was then that Lord Burleigh 



Reporting in Olden Time. if 

adopted the sensible course of spreading 
information by means of a news-sheet ; and, 
notwithstanding the forgeries in the British 
Museum, such a paper was circulated under 
the title of the English Mercurie. 

• But to Nathaniel Butter belongs the 
honour of printing the first English news- 
paper issued regularly and methodically. 
He was one of the most accomplished 
news-writers of the seventeeth century — 
practically the first English journalist, a 
man of intelligence, foresight, and energy, 
a man indefatigable in collecting news. 
Had he lived in the present day, he would 
probably have been styled "a penny-a- 
liner," one who sends news to the papers 
at so much per line, an industrious writer 
with stylus, and flimsy, and carbon paper, 
ever on the alert to get facts, to make 
manifold copies, detailing shipwrecks, tra- 
gedies, accidents, startling events of all 
kinds, and to send them broadcast to 



1 8 Newspaper Reporting. 

every newspaper likely to appreciate his 
work. But as Nathaniel Butter lived before 
the age of daily newspapers, the scope for 
his talents was somewhat limited. Still, 
he made the most of his opportunities; 
and, after laboriously writing, say to "my 
lord" in Cornwall, about some gamesters' 
brawl, or to "my lady" in Yorkshire, 
about some love intrigue at Court, he de- 
termined to print, instead of writing, the 
news he collected, and the result was the 
issue in 1622 of the first number of the 
Weekly Newes. It was a novelty, and it 
prospered ; the aristocracy still kept to their 
news-letters, and generally looked down 
upon the printed sheet ; but the intelli- 
gence it contained was concise, interesting, 
and frequently startling. People bought it, 
though they did not always rely on the 
truthfulness of its contents ; and the Weekly 
Newes may be spoken of as the first suc- 
cessful pioneer of modern journalism. 



Reporting in Olden Time. 19 

In this century, when science, giant-like, 
is striding resistlessly along the most difficult 
and intricate paths, scarcely a year passes 
without the adoption of some new device, 
to which everybody soon gets accustomed. 
Though superstition was common enough 
and education only flickered in Nathaniel 
Butter's day, there was much the same 
spirit of philosophy existing, the same 
capacity to adapt oneself to circumstances, 
and the newspaper, widely accepted, soon 
thrust itself into a far from insignificant 
position in English life. True, it was a 
crude newspaper, conspicuous rather for 
its imperfections than its excellence; still, 
it bore out the epigram, written in 1640, in 
Wit's Recreations : — 

" When news doth come, if any would discuss 
The letter of the word, resolve it thus : 
News is conveyed by letter, word, or mouth, 
And comes to us from north, east, west, or south." 

From all quarters, by flattery, cajolery, or 



20 Newspaper Reporting. 

payment, Nathaniel Butter secured news 
for his paper, and much of it was more 
sensational even than can be found in 
some modern journals. Here, for instance, 
are two remarkable paragraphs that appeared 
in a seventeenth-century newspaper : — 

"A true relation of the strange appear- 
ance of a man-fish about three miles within 
the river Thames, having a musket in one 
hand and a petition in the other, credibly 
reported by six sailors, who both saw and 
talked with the monster." 

" A perfect mermaid was, by the last 
great wind, driven ashore near Greenwich, 
with her comb in one hand and her 
looking-glass in the other. She seemed 
to be - of the countenance of a most fair 
and beautiful woman, with her arms 
crossed, weeping out many pearly drops 
of salt tears; and afterwards she, gently 
turning herself upon her back again, swam 
away without being seen any more." 



Reporting in Olden Time. 2 1 

These are wonderful stories; yet it must 
not be imagined that the newspaper was 
made up entirely of such Baron-Munch- 
hausenlike writing. Current events were 
chronicled, and in the main chronicled 
faithfully ; and perhaps one of the earliest 
examples of English reporting is to be 
found in this century — an account of the 
great London Fire, given in the London 
Gazette in 1666 : — 

" On the 2nd inst, at one of the clock 
in the morning, there happened to break 
out a sad and deplorable fire in Pudding 
Lane, near New Fish Street, which falling 
out at that hour of the night, and in a 
quarter of the town so close built with 
wooden pitched houses, spread itself so far 
before day, and with such distraction to 
the inhabitants and neighbours, that care 
was not taken for the timely preventing 
the further effusion of it by pulling down 
houses as ought to have been; so that 



22 Newspaper Reporting. 

this lamentable fire in a short time became 
too big to be mastered by any engines or 
working near it. It fell out, most un- 
happily too, that a violent easterly wind 
fomented it, and kept it burning all that 
day, and the night following, spreading 
itself up to Gracechurch Street, and down- 
wards from Cannon Street to the Water- 
side, as far as the Three Cranes in the 
Vintrey. The people, in all parts about 
it, distracted by the vastness of it, and 
their particular care to carry away their 
goods, many attempts were made to pre- 
vent the spreading of it by pulling down 
houses, and making great intervals, but all 
in vain, the fire seizing upon the timber 
and rubbish, and so continuing itself, even 
through those spaces, and raging in a 
bright flame all Monday and Tuesday, not- 
withstanding his Majesties own and his 
Royal Highnesses indefatigable and per- 
sonal pains to apply all possible means to 



Reporting in Olden Time, 23 

prevent it, calling upon and helping the 
people with their Guards ; and a great 
number of nobility and gentry unweariedly 
assisting therein, for which they were re- 
quited with a thousand blessings from the 
poor distressed people. By the favour of 
God the wind slackened a little on Tues- 
day night, and the flames meeting with 
brick-buildings at the Temple, by little 
and little it was observed to lose its force 
on that side, so that on Wednesday morn- 
ing we began to hope well, and his Royal 
Highness, never despairing or slackning 
his personal care, wrought so well that 
day, assisted in some parts by the Lords 
of the Council before and behind it, that a 
stop was put to it at the Temple Church, 
near Holburn Bridge, Pie-corner, Alders- 
gate, Cripplegate, near the lower end of 
Coleman Street, at the end of Basinghall 
Street, by the Postern, at the upper end of 
Bishopsgate Street, and Leadenhall Street, 



24 Newspaper Reporting. 

at the Standard in Cornhill, at the church 
in Fanchurch Street, near Clothworkers 
Hall in Mincing Lane, at the middle of 
Mark Lane, and at the Tower dock." 

Not many years after the Great Fire — in 
1702 — the first daily newspaper, styled the 
Daily Courant, started ; and since that time 
the history of the English newspaper press 
has been one of enterprise and progress. 
The daily newspaper, be it the Times, 
the Standard, the Daily News, the Man- 
chester Guardian, the Scotsman, the Glas- 
gow Herald, the Yorkshire Post, or the 
Leeds Mercury, that appears on the break- 
fast-table every morning, is a great con- 
trast to the small and feeble daily journal 
of nearly two hundred ■ years ago. The 
Daily Courant, only printed on one side, 
was no larger than a leaf in a quarto 
encyclopedia ; it contained only a few insig- 
nificant news paragraphs, home and foreign, 
and the frank statement that "the editor 



Reporting in Olden Time. 25 

would give no comments of his own, as he 
assumed that other people had sense enough 
to make reflections for themselves." What 
a different paper is the modern daily, with 
its summary, leading articles, special corre- 
spondence flashed nightly over the private 
wire, reports of speeches in and out of 
Parliament, intelligence as to how feverishly 
or steadily the pulse of commerce beats, 
and general news more or less attractive 
from every corner of the land and every 
quarter of the globe ! Yet few of its readers 
think at what wear and tear of brain and 
hand the news-sheet is produced. They are 
generally getting their beauty-sleep at mid- 
night, when the newspaper office is ablaze 
with light — instinct with vigorous life ; when 
the editor, with shrewd mind and ready 
pen, is showing his aptitude at political 
criticism; when the sub-editors, in touch 
by telegraph with all the world, have their 
desks piled high with copy, from which they 



26 Newspaper Reporting. 

must, with skill and celerity, select the con- 
tents of the next issue ; when the harassed 
foreman over the printers — the autocrat of 
the night — scowls at every additional scrap 
of copy, swears it cannot be put in type in 
time to get to press, and shouts to his 
men, "Push on with correcting, gentlemen," 
" New York prices," " Section Z Churchill's 
speech," and similar phrases, until the last 
line is set up, the type is in the formes, rushed 
to the foundry to be cast, the plates placed 
on the machines, the papers printed, and 
taken at no snail's pace to the stations to 
catch the newspaper trains. It is sharp 
work, this daily grasp of the world's news, 
and is responsible for many bald heads, 
wrinkled brows, and crow's-feet about the 
eyes ; but it is work that brings some satis- 
faction and pride in its accomplishment. 

It is, after all, on the reporter that the 
success of the newspaper to- a great extent 
depends. He is the collector of news, for 



Reporting in Olden Time. 2J 

the circulation of which the paper really 
exists. He is indispensable. On his ver- 
batim report of the Premier's speech the 
editor bases his leading article. Were it 
not for the reporter's industry at home and 
abroad, and the persistent and sometimes 
whimsically ungrammatical zeal of the 
country correspondent, the sub-editor's ruth- 
less occupation would be gone. The re- 
porter is always busy ; he is tireless. He 
records the splendour and dazzle of the 
Queen's drawing-room, and the want and 
wretchedness of the poor. No festival is 
complete without him; and he turns up at 
every calamity. He listens to the debates 
in the House and opens his note-book at 
every public meeting. He chronicles the 
deeds of the hero and the crimes of the 
miscreant. He tells how the pulse of com- 
merce beats in every market of the world; 
science and art are beholden to his pen ; 
and even religion itself has to thank him 



28 Newspaper Reporting. 

for some of its spread. He has become a 
necessity to newspaper production, and no 
inconsiderable figure in the national life. 
Therefore it may be interesting to show 
what his duties are, how he performs them, 
and with what experience and adventure 
his career is linked. 



II. 

The Reporter in Parliament. 




CHAPTER II. 

The Reporter in Parliament. 

jN Lord Beaconsfield's novel Endy- 
miori) one of the characters is 
made to say, " That odious House 
of Commons is very wearisome," and doubts 
whether any constitution can bear it very 
long. But, however wearisome it may be, 
and whatever its faults, the House of Com- 
mons is a source of pride to many English- 
men. Its legislative errors and enervating 
verbosity are forgotten in the remembrance 
that the place is hallowed by memories of 
great statesmen, echoing still, as it were, 
with the voices of famous orators of the 



32 Newspaper Reporting, 

past, and associated with some measures 
that have not been without benefit to the 
nation. Even out of its prejudice and oppo- 
sition good has occasionally come \ and, so 
far as the Press of this country is concerned, 
it is more powerful to-day because of the 
persecution to which the House of Commons 
subjected the reporter in years gone by. He 
was held in scorn, looked upon as an eaves- 
dropper, an interloper, a low fellow ; he took 
notes in secret, apologised in public, and nar- 
rowly escaped being flung into the Thames. 
But still he took notes, and, having once got 
his foot in the House, he managed to keep 
it there ; and now the reporter is as much 
at home in Parliament as the hon. member 
whose wise or foolish words he so deftly 
takes down in shorthand. 

But how he had to fight before his mission 
was even tacitly recognised ! what struggling 
he went through before he was allowed to 
take his seat quietly in the reporters' gallery ! 



The Reporter in Parliament. 33 

It is claimed by some historians that Sir 
Symonds d'Ewes, who furnished an account 
of the' proceedings of the House in Eliza- 
beth's reign, was really the first parliamentary 
reporter ; but among pressmen Edward Cave 
is generally regarded as the father of English 
reporting. In the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century intelligence of many kinds 
was published with the greatest freedom. 
For instance, in 1731 this marriage notice 
appeared : " The Rev. Mr. Rogers Staines, 
of York, twenty-six years of age, to a Lincoln- 
shire lady upwards of eighty years of age, 
with whom he is to have ^8,000, and ^300 
a year, and a coach and four during life only." 
But with regard to debates in Parliament the 
people were not taken into confidence in this 
ingenuous way. The searching light of poli- 
tical criticism did not mercilessly flash on 
hon. members as it does now. Their utter- 
ances in the House were as jealously guarded 
as if Cerberus, with his many heads and 

3 



34 Newspaper Reporting. 

serpent's tail, stood savagely growling at the 
gate ; and in 1729 the legislators, finding that 
some echo of their speeches had got out 
among the vulgar throng, passed with much 
determination a resolution to the effect that 
it was a violation of the House's privileges 
to publish reports of its proceedings, and 
" that in future the offenders be punished 
with the utmost severity." The threat 
weighed little with Edward Cave. He had 
founded the Gentleman's Magazine ; he de- 
termined to make the reporting of parlia- 
mentary debates one of its chief features, 
and in 1736, according to Sir John Hawkins, 
he did a bold thing. " Taking with him a 
friend or two, he found means to procure 
for them and himself admission into the 
gallery of the House of Commons, or to 
some concealed station in the other House, 
and then they privately took down notes of 
the several speeches, and the general ten- 
dency and substance of the arguments. Thus 



The Reporter in Parliament. 35 

furnished, Cave and his associates would 
adjourn to a neighbouring tavern, and 
compare and adjust their notes, by means 
whereof, and the help of their memories, 
they became enabled to fix at least the 
substance of what they had lately heard and 
remarked. The reducing this crude matter 
into form was the work of a future day and 
an abler hand — Guthrie, the historian, whom 
Cave retained for the purpose." The note- 
taking was surreptitious ; the transcription in 
the neighbouring tavern not very dignified ; 
but this crude attempt at recording the 
speeches of hon. members was practically 
the birth of the well-nigh perfect system of 
parliamentary reporting that may be now 
seen working any night when the House is 
sitting. 

For two years Cave's temerity went un- 
questioned. His reports were talked about 
in the clubs and the coffee-houses, spoken 
of with commendation, ridicule, contempt, 



36 Newspaper Reporting. 

as the case might be. Prominent legislators 
were astounded at the man's effrontery, then 
they became indignant, and in 1738, after a 
very heated debate in the House, another 
resolution was passed, threatening Cave and 
his ingenious and audacious penmen with all 
sorts of penalties if they dared to continue 
this reprehensible practice. But the threat 
was of no avail. It simply changed the 
manner of, but did not suppress, Cave's 
reporting. Hitherto he had given the first 
and last letter of a speaker's name, such 

as, " L — d S y, in criticising the foreign 

policy of the Government," or " Mr. G e, 

in explanation of his Irish proposals ; " but 
now he had recourse to a fictitious name for 
Parliament, and turned every speaker's name 
topsy-turvy. This he did so adroitly that it 
was easy enough to identify any member's 
utterances. It was in April that the House 
waxed wroth about reporters and their 
impertinence in thrusting themselves into 



The Reporter in Parliament. 37 

such a select assembly. In June Cave set 
the House at defiance. He gave more 
copious reports of the speeches in Parlia- 
ment, but he published them in his maga- 
zine as "An Appendix to Captain Lemuel 
Gulliver's Account of the Famous Empire of 
Lilliput," under the heading, "Debates in 
the Senate of Great Lilliput." A duke was 
a Nardac, a lord styled Hurgo, and an ordi- 
nary hon. member a Clinab. The disguise 
was so slight that it did not mystify even the 
dullest politician; but it saved Cave from 
fines and penalties, for the House could not 
proceed against a man for reporting the 
speeches of statesmen in the imaginary 
kingdom of Lilliput. 

Guthrie was scarcely equal to this new 
phase of reporting, and on November 19th, 
1740, Cave engaged Dr. Johnson to do the 
work. At that time the Doctor was only 
thirty years of age, full of energy, with an 
exhaustless capacity for trenchant writing, 



38 Newspaper Reporting. 

and he took a real delight in putting elo- 
quent words into the mouths of statesmen, 
whether they had uttered them or not. 
The people, reading Dr. Johnson's reports 
of Parliament, wondered at the Demosthenic 
power so suddenly revealed by our legis- 
lators, characterised as the speeches were 
by "force of argument and splendour of 
language." 

For nearly three years Dr. Johnson con- 
tinued Cave's reporter, and during the whole 
of this period parliamentary utterances were 
widely read. Some of the speeches, as re- 
ported, were marvels of scholarly diction, 
and, when in print, surprised even the mem- 
bers themselves. Reporting was the easiest 
thing in the world to the Doctor. He did 
not trouble to go to the House. His custom 
was " to fix upon a speaker's name, then to 
make an argument for him, and conjure 
up an answer;" and he did all this so 
well that Voltaire, on reading the debates, 



The Reporter in Parliament. 39 

exclaimed, "The eloquence of Greece and 
Rome is revived in the British Senate." 
One of the most notable speeches credited 
to the elder Pitt was written by Dr. Johnson 
in a garret in Exeter Street; and, when 
asked, at a dinner given by Foote, how it 
was possible for him to write the speech, 
he retorted, "Sir, I wrote it in Exeter 
Street. I never was in the gallery of the 
House of Commons but once in my life. 
Cave had interest with the doorkeepers ; he 
and the persons employed under him got 
admittance, they brought away the subjects 
of discussion, the names of the speakers, the 
side they took, and the order in which they 
rose, together with notes of various arguments 
adduced in the course of the debate. The 
whole was afterwards communicated to me, 
and I composed the speeches in the form 
they now have in the parliamentary debates." 
It was a strange expedient, and would not 
be tolerated now, especially if the modern 



40 Newspaper Reporting, 

reporter, presuming he manufactured the 
speeches, had a jot of the bias of Dr. Johnson, 
who made no scruple in confessing that he 
" took care the Whig dogs should never have 
the best of the argument." 

Cave, in spite of his ingenuity in giving 
publicity to the proceedings of the House 
of Commons, soon got into trouble with 
regard to speeches in the House of Lords, 
and in 1747, along with Thomas Astley, 
the printer of the London Magazine^ was 
ordered into the custody of the Usher of 
the Black Rod. Both men had printed 
in their magazines reports of the trial of 
Lord Lovat, who was charged with high 
treason in the 1745 rebellion. For this 
offence — this grave breach of privilege — 
Cave's apology was abject, though it is 
probable there was a spice of satire in 
the manner in which he humbly implored 
their lordships' pardon. Anyhow, he was 
set free on paying the fees and solemnly 



The Reporter in Parliament, 41 

promising never to commit such an offence 
again. 

The next few years was an exciting time 
for the Press. It numbered among its 
writers Fielding, Smollett, Johnson, John 
Wilkes, Lord Temple, Charles Churchill, 
and the mysterious writer of The Letters of 
Junius. It was a time of very plain speak- 
ing, of wit, sarcasm, and strong criticism. 
Wilkes, however, was the scorpion. In his 
paper the North Briton, his comments on 
the Bute Administration were so scathing 
that he overthrew the Ministry; he even 
went to the extreme of saying that the King, 
on. the opening of Parliament in 1762, did 
not speak the truth; he was committed to 
the Tower, expelled from the House of 
Commons, of which he had been a mem- 
ber, and altogether went through a very 
stormy time, being punished not only by 
Parliament, but threatened by aggrieved in- 
dividuals — such, for instance, as Captain 



42 Newspaper Reporting. 

Forbes, a Scotchman, who, incensed at 
what Wilkes had written about his country, 
said to the intrepid journalist, "The first 
time ever I shall meet you in the streets 
or elsewhere, I will give you an hundred 
strokes of a stick, as you deserve to be 
used no more as a gentleman, but as an 
eternal rascal and scoundrel." 

Meanwhile the reporters were courage- 
ously fighting their own battle, giving such 
reports as they could gather of the proceed- 
ings in Parliament, enduring the obloquy 
of hon. members, taking notes of speeches 
amid considerable difficulty, and daily 
expecting the chagrin of the House to 
focus in some arbitrary action against them. 
At last the sword of Damocles fell. Lord 
Marchmont took an almost sardonic plea- 
sure in proceeding against the printer of 
any paper for breach of privilege. If any 
nobleman's name was mentioned in the 
report of a debate, it was in the power of 



The Reporter in Parliament. 43 

the Legislature to inflict a fine of ^"ioo ; 
and his lordship, who abominated news- 
papers, found intense enjoyment in pressing 
for these fines, or in having half a dozen 
newspaper proprietors apologising in a row 
on their knees at the bar of the House. 
And the House of Commons, on February 
5th, 177 1, became so exasperated at the 
conduct of the reporters " misrepresenting 
the speeches and reflecting on several of 
the members of this House," that it nearly 
forgot its own dignity. Not only were the 
printers of the leading newspapers called 
to the bar, reprimanded, and ordered to 
pay the fees, but an erTort was also made 
to render liable the " compositors, pressmen, 
correctors, blackers, and devils." Miller, 
the printer of the London Evening Post, did 
not surrender, and was ordered to be taken 
into custody by the sergeant-at-arms. But, 
to the anger of the House and the amuse- 
ment of the people outside, the sergeant- 



44 Newspaper Reporting. 

at-arms was thwarted. His messenger 
arrested Miller, but Miller gave the mes- 
senger into custody for assault. The 
unfortunate officer — though he was the 
representative of the House of Commons — 
was taken before Brass Crosby, the Lord 
Mayor, and committed for assault ! So the 
House had the intense mortification of 
seeing their own servant treated with 
ignominy, and the printer who had defied 
them set free ! The Lord Mayor, attending 
in his place in Parliament, pointed out 
that, according to the charter granted to 
the City of London by Edward III. in the 
first year of his reign, the citizens were 
exempted from any law process being served 
upon them except by their own officers ; 
but the House was determined to have 
satisfaction for the insult it had received in 
the City. 

The debate was an angry one, carried 
on with a mob at the doors of West- 



The Reporter in Parliament. 45 

minster; the House was adjourned for two 
days, when another fierce war of words 
took place ; then the chief magistrate was 
committed to the Tower, as well as Alder- 
man Oliver, who upheld his ruling ; but on 
the prorogation of Parliament, and when the 
House had no longer the power to keep them 
captive, they stepped triumphantly out of the 
Tower, amid much rejoicing. 

This strange and exciting conflict be- 
tween Parliament and the City authorities 
nearly annihilated further opposition to the 
reporting of debates. The people were 
thoroughly roused; they claimed as a right 
that they should know what their repre- 
sentatives were saying; it was idle for 
members to fuss and fume and to heap op- 
probrium on the stenographer. As Andrews 
says, in his History of British Journalism, 
"The Press was now, for the first time, 
the acknowledged representative of the 
people. There it stood overlooking, perhaps 



46 Newspaper Reporting. 

sometimes overawing, those who had known 
and cared nothing for their constituents 
after they left the hustings; a jealous guar- 
dian, a watchful sentinel, a sleepless Argus ; 
behind the Speaker's chair there had sprung 
up a power greater than the Speaker, for 
there in the gallery was the eye of Europe ; 
the House of Commons had been unroofed, 
and the world was looking in." 



III. 

Incidents and Traditions of 
-The Gallery." 



. CHAPTER III 

Incidents and Traditions of "The 
Gallery." 

KgMjBOUT the time Oliver Goldsmith 
HgAvj was surprising the readers of the 
Iffy t i ll Public Ledger with his delightful 
letters from a " Citizen of the World," William 
Woodfall, the first editor of the Morning 
Chronicle^ was astounding everybody by his 
wonderful memory. It was in 1769 that 
the Morning Chronicle was issued. Then 
newspaper enterprise was in its infancy. 
The great staffs now absolutely necessary 
on daily papers were undreamt of. 
"Memory Woodfall," as he was familiarly 

4 



50 Newspaper Reporting. 

called, on account of his marvellous power 
of recollection, had neither assistant editors, 
sub-editors, nor reporters to help him ; he 
was editor, reporter, and printer of the 
Morning Chronicle. His editorial duties 
were not arduous, for until 1781 no leading 
article whatever appeared in the paper ; but 
he was a giant, a prince among reporters, 
possessing not only extraordinary ability, 
but a wondrous capacity for physical endu- 
rance, that must be the envy of many a 
modern reporter. 

It is a popular but absurd notion, that 
reporting takes something of the character 
of a perpetual holiday, that there is more 
amusement than hard labour in it ; whereas 
of all professions it is perhaps the most 
exhausting, the profession of all others in 
which a strong physique and determined 
will are necessary to success. The equit- 
able division of labour on the best reporting 
staffs has been obtained to a nicety; still 



Traditions of "The Gallery." 51 

there are occasions when not only the 
mental qualities of a Metternich,. but the 
strength of Hercules, are expected in 
the reporter; and many a night he goes 
home worn out by anxiety, and almost 
prostrate with the utter weariness and 
enfeeblement that comes as nature's pro- 
test to ceaseless note-taking and prolonged 
manufacture of copy for the printers. 

But " Memory Woodfall " was called 
upon by the nature of his duties and 
his limited staff to do more than many 
a modern reporter, and he became a 
notable figure in " the gallery " of the 
House of Commons, quite as much through 
his physical endurance and his work- 
ing tenacity as for his splendid memory. 
There are now many gifted men in " the 
gallery" — men with considerable capacity 
for work, men of great professional skill, 
and high intellectual attainments ; but 
the bulk of their work is less than 



52 Newspaper Reporting. 

Woodfall's, and they do it under plea- 
santer conditions. Even when Parliament 
was snarling at the audacity of the 
Press, Woodfall managed to get into the 
House. With a sandwich or a hard- 
boiled egg in his pocket, he would sit 
out the longest debate, listen attentively to 
everything that was said, but never take 
a note; then, when the members, longing 
for change, went to bed, to ball, or to 
party, he would go to the office, and, with 
nearly every word uttered in the debate 
treasured in his retentive brain, would 
write entirely from memory fifteen or six- 
teen speeches. Woodfall's experiences of 
Parliament certainly resulted in more all- 
night sittings than those of any member 
of the House during recent days, or 
rather nights, of obstruction. 

Not so assiduous, perhaps, as Woodfall, 
but more ingenious, was William Radcliffe, 
the novelist's husband. He was an Ox- 



Traditions of " The Gallery? 5 3 

ford man, a law student, an attache; but 
for him reporting had a fascination that 
he could not overcome. He cared less 
for diplomatic fame than the incessant 
whirl and variety of a reporter's life ; 
true, he became a newspaper proprietor, 
but he was his own reporter, and pos- 
sessed such a faculty for mental con- 
centration, that he could, as it were, 
divide his mind into two parts, and dic- 
tate to his compositors from memory, and 
without notes, two distinct articles at the 
same time dealing with debates in the 
House — for instance, "while a sentence 
in one article was being set up, he had 
resumed the other, and was dictating it 
without hesitation or confusion." 

This dual exercise of the mind is com- 
mon now with many experienced reporters. 
They are able to write out in longhand 
what the speaker has said, and at the 
same time to listen attentively to what 



54 Newspaper Reporting. 

the speaker is saying ; otherwise they 
would, in the case of a night meeting, 
never get their work done in time. They 
have solved the problem that it is possible 
to do two things at once, and, as a rule, 
they do them admirably; but Radcliffe, 
by his versatile process of dictation in 
the middle of the eighteenth century, 
when newspaper training was a very hap- 
hazard affair, was justly considered a pheno- 
menal reporter. 

To James Perry is due the credit of 
revolutionising reporting in the last century. 
Leigh Hunt describes him as "a lively, 
good-natured man, with a shrewd expression 
of countenance, and twinkling eyes, which 
he not unwillingly turned upon the ladies ; * 
but, whatever his devotion to the fair sex, 
he was a talented, industrious journalist. 
Scarcely any one had a more romantic youth. 
From his home in Aberdeen he went to 
college, and was afterwards articled to an 



Traditions of " The Gallery!' 5 5 

attorney; but his father got into financial 
embarrassment, and James Perry had to 
seek such fortune as he could find. When 
thrown upon the world, he showed more 
agility with his legs than activity with his 
brain. As a strolling player he once ap- 
peared in the character of " Sempronius," 
but it was not so much in his power as an 
actor as in the perfection of his dancing 
that he was of value to the company — he 
was chiefly relied upon for a hornpipe 
between the acts ! His experience of the 
drama had not much of the glamour of 
fame about it, and he tried a clerkship in 
Manchester ; but the endless reckoning-up 
of figures, the monotony of commercial life, 
wearied him. He broke away desperately 
from office routine and went to London, 
where, after some struggling, he achieved 
success. Nichols, in his Literary Anecdotes of 
tlie Eighteenth Century, says : " Mr. Perry's 
efforts to . obtain a situation were unavailing. 



56 Newspaper Reporting. 

But while waiting in London for some 
situation presenting itself, he amused him- 
self in writing fugitive verses and short 
essays, which he put into the letter-box of 
the General Advertiser, as the casual con- 
tributions of an anonymous correspondent ; 
and they were of such merit as to pro- 
cure immediate insertion. It happened 
that a firm to whom he had a letter of 
introduction, namely Messrs. Richardson 
and Urquhart, were part proprietors of the 
Advertiser, and on these gentlemen Mr. 
Perry was in the habit of calling daily to 
inquire if any situation had yet offered for 
him. On entering their shop one day to 
make the usual inquiry, Mr. Perry found 
Urquhart engaged in reading an article in 
the Advertiser, and evidently with great 
satisfaction. When he had finished, the 
former put the now almost hopeless ques- 
tion whether any situation had yet presented 
itself, and it was answered in the negative. 



Traditions of " The Gallery" 5 7 

" But," added Mr. Urquhart, " if you could 
write such articles as these," pointing to 
that he had just been reading, " you would 
find immediate employment." Mr. Perry 
glanced at the article, discovered that it 
was one of his own, and convinced his 
friend, Mr. Urquhart, "by showing another 
article in manuscript, which he had intended 
to put into the box as usual before return- 
ing home." Perry, after this proof of his 
literary ability, was placed on the staff of the 
Advertiser, with the understanding that he 
should have extra pay for any help he 
might give to the London Evening Post It 
was a rare opportunity, and he valued it at 
its true worth. Not only did he excel in 
original writing, but he revealed great talent 
as a reporter — enduring talent; for during 
the trial of Admiral Keppel and Admiral 
Palliser, extending over six weeks, " he sent 
up daily from Portsmouth eight columns of 
the reports, taken by himself alone, which 



58 Newspaper Reporting. 

increased the circulation of the paper by 
several thousands daily." The man was a 
born journalist; and his talents were so 
speedily recognised, that he was offered, and 
accepted, the editorship of the Gazetteer. 
The salary was only four guineas a week, 
not a particularly exorbitant sum, when it is 
remembered that an editor's salary nowadays 
sometimes goes into four figures ; but it 
enabled Perry to live comfortably until he 
made a greater name and a better position 
on the Press. 

Like all editors worthy the name, he kept 
his eyes open, and he saw that the crude 
system of reporting then prevailing was 
capable of much improvement. "Memory 
Woodfall " was as indefatigable as ever, 
laboriously writing out long debates through 
the night for publication on the following 
day; but Perry said to himself, "Why 
should not the reports of these debates 
be published the next morning ? " And 



Traditions of "The Gallery? 59 

he answered the question himself. He 
organised a corps of reporters for his 
paper. He got them into the House. 
They reported hand over hand, as it were 
— one reporter taking one speech, another 
reporter taking another, and so on through- 
out the debate; so that often when the 
House rose the speeches made there were 
almost in type in the office of the Gazetteer, 
and the paper appeared the next morning 
containing a tolerably full report of the 
previous night's proceedings in Parliament. 
" Memory Woodfall," whose report was not 
finished until hours afterwards, was by no 
means pleased with this new phase of 
reporting that entirely forestalled his own 
labours ; but newspaper readers were de- 
lighted, there was a daily increasing demand 
for the Gazetteer, and the new system of 
reporting, conceived and carried out by 
Perry, was generally adopted. This system 
he improved and perfected during his 



60 Newspaper Reporting. 

connection with the Morning Chronicle, 
of which he became part purchaser and 
editor. The story as to where the money 
came from to purchase the paper is 
told by Mr. Charles Pebody, in his book 
English Journalism, and the Men Who 
Have Made It. " Old Bellamy, the house- 
keeper of St. Stephen's," he says, " found 
the money for the purchase of the Morning 
Chronicle, and it was through his friendship 
that Perry was able to pass his reporters in 
and out of the gallery when the reporters 
of every other paper found the doors closed 
against them. Bellamy made a fortune by 
the way in which, when the House con- 
tinued its sittings after the dinner-hour, he put 
a chop or a steak on the gridiron for hungry 
M.P.'s, and served it upon a small table in 
the corner of the kitchen with a glass of 
port or sherry from the wood ; and the story 
runs that Perry and his partner — Mr. Gray 
— in taking the Morning Chronicle, were 



Traditions of " The Gallery': 6 1 

obliged to take with it so much of Bellamy's 
old port, that from the time of the purchase 
in 1792 till the date of Perry's death in 
1 82 1, the anniversary of the purchase never 
returned without finding enough of the 
original stock in the cellar to drink to the 
memory of Bellamy and his advance." 

Whether it was the quality of his port, or 
his genial disposition, or the liberality of 
his remuneration, Perry managed to gather 
round him many distinguished writers — 
men like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Porson, 
Mackintosh, Hazlitt, and John Campbell, 
who, by-the-bye, though he became Lord 
High Chancellor, was a curious dramatic 
critic, one of his notices in the Morning 
Chronicle beginning, " Last night a play 
called Romeo and Juliet was performed 
at Drury Lane. The play is a good one 
so far as it went, and was performed in a 
very creditable manner. But it is too long 
for these days ; and we would recommend 



62 Newspaper Reporting. 

the author, before he puts it again on the 
stage, to cut it down " ! 1 This singular 
ignorance of Shakespeare, however, is per- 
haps more to be excused than that shown 
only a few years ago by a dramatic critic in 
the provinces. He went to see the play of 
Hamlet, and, writing about it in the news- 
paper of which he was the representative, 
apologised for not giving the plot, owing 
to want of space, and expressed his sur- 
prise that the piece contained many collo- 
quialisms with which people were already 
familiar ! 

Perry undoubtedly owed much of his 
success to his staff of brilliant writers ; 
but he was too shrewd a man to neglect 
the mainstay of the paper, the reporting 
department, and he had in his service 
many skilful reporters — "men who wrote 
shorthand." Of these one of the most 

1 Andrews, History of British Journalism. 



Traditions of " The Gallery" 6 3 

famous was John Black, who walked from 
Edinburgh to London, arrived at Charing 
Cross with only threepence in his pocket, 
was such a fierce person that he fought 
two duels, and was constantly at war with 
himself in his efforts to overcome "the 
boorishness of bearing" with which he was 
cursed; yet he made his name in the 
reporters' gallery, and finally succeeded Perry 
as editor of the Morning Chronicle. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Black's exciting 
career, he was not so Bohemian in his 
habits as some of the reporters who about 
this time sought their livelihood in "the 
gallery." The history of reporting at the 
close of the eighteenth century is a romance 
— a story of starvation and revelry, of pathos 
and recklessness, of despair and constant 
endeavour. There is no sadder anecdote 
in the English language than that of the 
life of Robert Heron. From 1793 to 1799 
the weaver's son, with his college education, 



64 Netvspaper Reporting. 

and his amazing extravagance, was in prison 
for debt. There he wrote his History of 
Scotland "for the benefit of his creditors," 
and then made his way to London, where 
he was engaged as parliamentary reporter 
on the Oracle^ and afterwards filled similar 
positions on the Porcupine and the Morning 
Post. Often "he had not a shilling in his 
pocket or a shirt to his back ; " if he got 
a sovereign by work or from a generous 
friend, he was restless until he had spent it ; 
he had good chances, but neglected them 
all. Appointed editor of the British Press, 
he held the appointment for a couple of 
weeks; his editorship of Lloyd's Evening 
Post lasted only a few months ; his connec- 
tion with the British Neptune he severed 
for a whim ; and he came to hopeless grief 
with Fame, his own paper, strangely named, 
considering that it was an utter failure, and 
that its proprietor, according to D'Israeli's 
Calamities of Authors, dragged out a long 



Traditions of " The Gallery!' 6 5 

imprisonment in Newgate, and died a 
wretched death in the Fever Hospital 
in Gray's Inn Lane, penniless and for- 
saken. 

A much more rollicking, and certainly 
less miserable, member of the Press was 
Mark Supple. Mr. Andrews, in his British 
Journalism, describes him as " the big-boned 
Irish reporter on the staff of Perry of the 
Morning Chronicle" and gives the following 
amusing account of one of his freaks : 
" Supple's fame now rests on the anecdote 
told of him by Peter Finnerty (a fellow- 
reporter who survived him only four years) 
of an after-dinner feat — he had dined at 
Bellamy's, as was his wont — when, taking ad- 
vantage of a pause in the debate, he roared 
out from the gallery for ' a song from 
Mr. Speaker ! ' The Speaker, the precise 
Addington, was paralysed; the House was 
thunderstruck — there was clearly no pre- 
cedent for such a proceeding as this ; in 

5 



66 Newspaper Reporting. 

the next minute the comic prevailed over 
the serious, and the House was in a roar 
of laughter, led off by Pitt. However, for 
appearance' sake, the sergeant-at-arms was 
obliged to seek out the offender, but no one 
in the gallery would betray Mark Supple, 
and the official was about retiring at fault, 
when Supple indicated to him by a meaning 
nod that a fat Quaker who sat near him 
was the delinquent. The poor Quaker was 
taken into custody accordingly; but in the 
midst of a scene of confusion and excite- 
ment the real offender was discovered, and, 
after a few hours' durance, was allowed to 
go off on making an apology." 

Peter Finnerty, the reporter mentioned 
in the above anecdote, was as fond of 
practical jokes as Theodore Hook. He 
did not, like some reporters, become over- 
whelmed with the importance and responsi- 
bility of his calling ; he neither worrited 
himself haggard, nor fidgeted his hair grey. 



• Traditions of "The Gallery \" 67 

Life to him was a comedy, a mirth-provoker, 
and he cared little whether the laugh was for 
or against him, so that' the laugh was there. 
Some of his jokes, however, were beyond 
a joke ; indeed, were Finnerty alive now, 
and succeeded in hoodwinking a colleague 
as he did Morgan O'Sullivan, he would 
run the risk of a thrashing. Morgan in 
the gallery one day felt so drowsy during 
a dull debate that he could scarcely keep 
his eyes open. Obtaining Finnerty's promise 
to supply him with any speeches made, 
Morgan was soon asleep, and awoke in 
about an hour greatly refreshed and eager 
for work. But he had to pay dearly for 
his slumber. Finnerty gravely informed 
him that during his nap there had been an 
important speech delivered by Mr. Wilber- 
force, a member of the House, on the 
virtues of the Irish potato. Morgan, never 
pausing to think that the subject had a 
suggestion of the ludicrous, would not be 



68 Newspaper Reporting. 

pacified until the speech had been dictated 
to him by Finnerty. 

The speech, entirely Finnerty's concoction, 
made Mr. Wilberforce say : " Had it been 
my lot to be born and reared in Ireland, 
where my food would have principally con- 
sisted of the potato — the most nutritious and 
salubrious root — instead of being the poor 
infirm, stunted creature you, Sir, and honour- 
able gentlemen now behold me, I should 
have been a tall, stout, athletic man, and 
able to carry an enormous weight. I hold 
that root to be invaluable ; and the man 
who first cultivated it in Ireland I regard 
as a benefactor of the first magnitude to 
his country." Morgan was so overjoyed at 
this legislative tribute to the excellence 
of his national potato, that he willingly 
dictated the speech to several other re- 
porters, and every newspaper of note — 
except the Morning Chronicle, in the office 
of which Finnerty sat chuckling — had this 



Traditions of "The Gallery." 69 

extraordinary report of Mr. Wilberforce's 
strange speech in the House on the extra- 
ordinary virtues of the Irish potato. 

The speech was read with amazement. 
At the clubs and in the City everybody 
was laughing at Mr. Wilberforce's speech — 
except Mr. Wilberforce. He thought it 
rather a cause for rage than merriment, 
especially as his friends gazed pityingly at 
him, thinking he had gone demented. 
But his anger cooled; and when the 
House met at night he said : " Every 
honourable member has doubtless read the 
speech which I am represented as having 
made on the previous night. [The hon. 
member read the speech amid roars of 
laughter.] I can assure hon. members," he 
continued, "that no one could have read 
this speech with more surprise than I my- 
self did this morning when I found the 
papers on my breakfast-table. For myself, 
personally, I care but little about it, 



JO Newspaper Reporting. 

though, if I were capable of uttering such 
nonsense as is here put into my mouth, it 
is high time that, instead of being a mem- 
ber of this House, I were an inmate of 
some lunatic asylum. It is for the dignity 
of this House that I feel concerned; for if 
hon. members were capable of listening to 
such nonsense, supposing me capable of 
giving expression to it, it were much more 
appropriate to call this a theatre for the 
performance of farces than a place for the 
legislative deliberations of the representa- 
lives of the nation." 

Finnerty, on this occasion, had not to 
pay any penalty for his- "exquisite gift 
of humour ; " but later, for a libel on Lord 
Castlereagh, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 
he was imprisoned in Lincoln Gaol for 
eighteen months. His exasperation at this 
incarceration knew no bounds. He felt 
like a strong-winged eagle in a cage, and 
became so fierce that his friends were 



Traditions of " The Gallery" 7 1 

almost afraid to converse with him. Cer- 
tainly he did not mince words when 
speaking to Lord Castlereagh. Grant, in his 
Newspaper Press, says : " Soon after Peter's 
release from jail he chanced to meet 
Lord Castlereagh in the streets ; and the 
latter went up to him, and, in the bluntest 
manner imaginable, inquired how he was. 
'Well enough,' was Peter's bluff answer, 
'to hope to live to see the day when you 
will cut your throat.' Nearly ten years 
after this, strange to say, Lord Castle- 
reagh did cut his throat; and Peter 
Finnerty lived to see that day." 

The reporters of the nineteenth century 
are still rather a Bohemian race. The 
Knights of the Pencil, as. they are 
sometimes called, are attracted to ^the 
Press from every class of society, and 
they include some strange though gifted 
beings; but it would be difficult to beat, 
for variety of characteristics, the hetero- 



J 2 Newspaper Reporting, 

geneous group of reporters who flourished 
in the old gallery of the House — men of 
original ideas, great attainments, convivial 
dispositions, erratic manners and cus- 
toms — men like John Payne Collier, the 
clever expounder of Shakespeare's text; 
O'Dwyer, the classical scholar, whose 
sense of the ludicrous so overbalanced his 
learning, that he reported the speech of 
Richard Martin, the member for Gal way, 
in italics ; William Jerdan, who had little 
consideration for other people's foibles, 
and described his own editor at work as 
follows : " Our editor was originally in- 
tended for the Kirk, and was a well- 
informed person; but to see him at or 
after midnight in his official chair a-writing 
his leader was a trial for a philosopher. 
With the slips of paper before him, a 
pot of porter close at hand, and a pipe 
of tobacco in his mouth or casually laid 
down, he proceeded secundum artem. The 



Traditions of "The Gallery! 1 73 

head hung, with the chin on the collar- 
bone, as in deep thought — a whiff — 
another — a tug at the beer— and a line 
and a half or two lines committed to the 
blotted paper. By this process, repeated 
with singular regularity, he would contrive 
between the hours of twelve and three to 
produce as decent a column as the igno- 
rant public required." 

' One of the most eccentric of this group 
of reporters was Proby, on the staff of the 
Morning Chronicle. Like "Memory Wood- 
fall," he never condescended to note- 
taking, and reported entirely from memory. 
It was his boast that he had never been 
out of London; he wore a bag-wig after 
they had been discarded by everybody 
else ; he " was the last man in London to 
walk with a cane as long as himself;" he 
was nicknamed "King Poms," because 
he was always perspiring ; "his appetite 
for pastry was inordinate, and he once or 



74 Newspaper Reporting. 

twice ruined himself by it, and had to be 
bailed out of prison for a pastry-cook's 
bill;" but with all his vagaries he had a 
horror of procrastination, and was never 
a minute late in his place in the gallery. 



IV. 
Reporting To- Day in the House. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Reporting To-Day in the House. 



JgJHlHE old House of Commons was 
%W% destroyed by fire in 1834, and 
■ f ^™l with the erection of the new 
House sprang up a new race of reporters. 
Parliament had not entirely lost its hos- 
tility to pressmen; there had been several 
attempts to eject them from the old 
gallery ; but the voice of the nation was 
stronger than the voice and prejudice of 
its representatives, and Lord Macaulay 
spoke the sentiments of the country when 
he said : " If the Commons were to suffer 



7 8 Newspaper Reporting. 

the Lords to amend money-bills, we do 
not believe that the people would care 
one straw about the matter. If they were 
to suffer the Lords even to originate 
money-bills, we doubt whether such a 
surrender of their constitutional rights 
would excite half so much dissatisfaction 
as the exclusion of strangers from a single 
important discussion. The gallery in which 
the reporters sit has become a fourth 
estate of the realm. The publication of 
the debates, a practice which seemed to 
the most liberal statesmen of the old 
school full of danger to the great safe- 
guards of public liberty, is now regarded 
by many persons as a safeguard tanta- 
mount, and more than tantamount, to all 
the rest together." 

Conversion came slowly to the House, 
as it does to most hardened sinners. 
Perry, the literary Ajax, made it uncom- 
fortable when he defiantly exclaimed, 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 79 

"The Morning Chronicle stands now, as it 
did in 1793, in the front of the battle, 
not only for itself, but for the liberty of 
the Press of England." Sir Joseph Yorke's 
motion for the expulsion of the reporters, 
and Windham's attack upon the gentle- 
men of the Press in the gallery, among 
whom he said "were to be found men of 
all descriptions — bankrupts, lottery office 
keepers, footmen, and decayed tradesmen," 
aroused indignation outside and encou- 
raged penitence in the House j and that 
conversion was almost completed by 
Sheridan's brilliant championship of the 
Press and his scornful refutation of Wind- 
ham's fictions, proving as he did, that, 
instead of being the offscouring of the 
City, nearly all the gentlemen — some 
twenty-four in number — then reporting the 
parliamentary debates for the newspapers 
were University men, and that many had 
gained literary distinction. 



80 Newspaper Reporting. 

Windham's was the last important out- 
burst against the admission of reporters to 
the House, and, though it was practically 
futile, it nearly wrought them irreparable 
injury in another quarter — at Lincoln's Inn. 
The benchers, presumably anxious not to 
lower the status of the Inn, adopted a reso- 
lution "that no man who had ever written 
for a newspaper for hire should be allowed 
to perform his preparatory exercises, in order 
to his admission to the Bar." The motion 
was unjust and ridiculous ; it was petitioned 
against in the House, and James Stephen, 
then Member of Parliament and Master in 
Chancery, remembering that he had been 
a reporter on the Morning Post, supported 
Sheridan's defence of the Press in a speech 
conspicuous for its eloquence — a speech in 
which he sketched the difficulties and priva- 
tions that many law students had to en- 
counter, and in which he discomfited the 
benchers by showing how often reporting in 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 81 

Parliament had been a means to many an 
impecunious barrister's success. No more 
was heard of the absurd resolution ; and it 
certainly seems strange that it should have 
been proposed at all, for to-day the Bar and 
the Press have quite a twin relationship. 
A number of the men in the reporters' gal- 
lery have "eaten their dinners," as it were, 
on the threshold of the Bar, and studied the 
mysteries of law, and the Temple is the 
home now of many who owe their prosperity 
as much to their shorthand dexterity, and 
the experience it gave them, as to the pages 
of Blackstone and the procedure of courts. 

With the breakdown of Windham's oppo- 
sition, and the ignominious retreat of the 
benchers, the position of the reporter in 
Parliament greatly improved. He had re- 
pelled a fierce attack. Like a skilful general, 
he entrenched himself behind the invul- 
nerable barricade of public opinion, and 
eventually felt strong enough to make re- 

6 



82 Newspaper Reporting. 

prisals. This he did with a vengeance in 
1833. Owing to the difficulty of hearing in 
the old gallery — where the reporters had to 
sit on a back seat, and catch the words of 
the members through a buzz of conversation 
from strangers sitting on the five or six 
rows of benches before them — frequent com- 
plaints were made of the inaccuracy of the 
reports. The House — or, at least, many 
members of it — had still a lingering anti- 
pathy to the Press, and O'Connell, constitut- 
ing himself the mouthpiece of the reporter- 
detesters, sought to clear the gallery of 
the obnoxious gentlemen. On July 25th 
he expressed his intention of waging war 
against the journal proprietary of London 
until he defeated them, and said he should 
move, day by day, for their appearance at 
the bar of the House for breach of privilege. 
Nor did he content himself with merely 
throwing down the gauntlet, but he endea- 
voured to stiletto the reporters in the back 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 83 

by charging them with suppressing his 
speeches from malicious motives. Indigna- 
tion surged through the gallery at this 
deliberate insult. The reporters signed a 
round-robin — published in the Times — 
which made O'Connell's Irish blood dance 
in his veins. It said : " Without any wish 
to prejudice the interests of the establish- 
ments with which many of us have been 
long connected, and to which all of us 
are sincerely attached, we have deliberately 
resolved not to report any speech of Mr. 
O'Connell until he shall have retracted, as 
publicly as he made, the calumnious asser- 
tion that our reports are designedly false." 

The exasperation of O'Connell was un- 
bounded. He moved that the representa- 
tives of the two most prominent newspapers 
should be brought to the bar of the House, 
because they had not reported one of his 
speeches fully. The resolution was very 
properly rejected. He used every oratorical 



84 Newspaper Reporting. 

art — he passionately declaimed, he spoke 
plaintively with his musical voice against 
those naughty reporters — but it was all in 
vain. They would not — they did not report 
his speeches. Then he had recourse to 
the old standing order, and, addressing the 
Speaker, said, "I think, Sir, I see strangers 
in the gallery." Strangers, according to the 
usage of Parliament, had to withdraw, and 
the reporters went out gladly. For days 
O'Connell continued this farcical comedy, 
for days he went unreported ; but at length 
his heroics died away to pleading, and as 
" several of the most influential members of 
the House appealed to them not to carry 
the matter further," the reporters ultimately 
resumed their duties as cheerfully as if they 
had never been ruffled by the O'Connell 
episode. 

The reporter is often called the servant 
of the public; and now and then some 
citizen who has scrambled into brief 



Reporting To- Day in the House, 85 

authority thinks he has a sort of pre- 
scriptive right in him — that he may order 
him about, tell him, not always in the 
most courteous language, what to chronicle 
and what to waive; but it is satisfactory 
to know that the reporter of to-day has 
a mind and will of his own, and that, 
while his devotion to duty is increasing 
almost to the verge of self-sacrifice, he is 
quite as fearless as the pressmen who braved 
O'Connell's wrath. 

Of the men who entered the reporters' 
gallery of the new House of Commons, 
the most distinguished was Charles Dickens. 
The novelty of William WoodfalPs memory 
feats had worn off. Several of the long- 
hand reporters who had been familiar figures 
in the old gallery were dead; and the new 
set of reporters gradually taking the places 
vacated by the older hands depended more 
upon shorthand than memory. In David 
Copperfield 3 Dickens gives an interesting 



86 Newspaper Reporting. 

glimpse at his shorthand proficiency. He 
says : " I have tamed that savage steno- 
graphic mystery. I make a respectable 
income by it. I am in high repute for my 
accomplishment in all pertaining to the art, 
and am joined with eleven others in re- 
porting the debates in Parliament for a 
morning paper. Night after night I record 
predictions that never come to pass, pro- 
fessions that are never fulfilled, explanations 
that are only meant to mystify. I wallow- 
in words." Dickens, it is evident, thought 
that Parliament, like Gratiano, spoke " an 
infinite deal of nothing," and was over- 
joyed "when he noted down the music 
of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last 
time." But he never regretted that he 
had to wallow in words there, and his ex- 
perience in the reporters' gallery was of 
infinite value to him when he entered upon 
the more ambitious literary path that led 
him to fame. The author of Pickwick 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 87 

won his spurs as a reporter on the Mirror 
of Parliament ; but it was in 1835 tnat ne 
went into the reporters' gallery on the staff 
of the Morning Chronicle, the paper so in- 
separably linked with his earlier career. 
At this time the reporters in Parliament 
had come upon more halcyon days — or 
rather nights. They had no longer to take 
a back seat; they were provided in the 
new House with a gallery for their use 
exclusively, and did their work under more 
comfortable conditions. Their position in 
that House is becoming stronger year by 
year. The standing order by which Par- 
liament has power to enforce the with- 
drawal of strangers is still a standing 
menace to the reporters, but it is only 
worthy of mention as a legislative and 
literary curiosity. In Dod's Parliamentary 
Companion, it is referred to as follows : — 



88 Newspaper Reporting. . 

Newspaper Reporters. 

"It is contrary to the standing orders of 
both Houses that any stranger should be 
present, and an individual member can 
demand that the order be enforced; the 
publication of debates is held to be theo- 
retically a breach of privilege; but in 
modern times, if any member were repeat- 
edly to insist upon the exclusion of 
•' strangers/ as all are called who neither 
are members nor officers of the House, 
there can be no doubt that this abuse of 
the privilege would lead to such a modi- 
fication of the standing order as would 
deprive individual members of any control 
over a matter so interesting to the nation, 
whose representatives and servants they are, 
from whose pleasure their parliamentary 
existence and authority are derived, and by 
whom that authority would doubtless be 
speedily withdrawn, were any attempt made 



Reporting To-Day in tJie House. 89 

to carry on the business of the public 
without publicity. Secret deliberations have 
been so long renounced, that the right of 
the public to be present through their 
agents, the reporters, is as clearly esta- 
blished now as if no theoretical privacy 
had ever existed. Occasions have arisen, 
however, though at long intervals, when 
the House has thought proper to exclude 
the public, as in 1870, when it was ex- 
cluded during debates not thought desirable 
to render public. Up to the year 187 1 
this could be effected by a single mem- 
ber, but in April of that year a Select 
Committee came to the decision that 
strangers should not be excluded except 
after a vote carried without amendment or 
debate. In 1875 to tms was added a reso- 
lution by which the Speaker or Chairman, 
as the case may be, was empowered to order 
the withdrawal of strangers from any part 
of the House. But such an order does not 



90 Newspaper Reporting. 

oblige ladies to withdraw from their gallery, 
which is not supposed to be within the 
House." 

The Speaker, though empowered to order 
the withdrawal of strangers from the House, 
is very chary in exercising his preroga- 
tive. There is, however, in Mr. Lucy's 
book, A Diary of Two Parliaments, an 
account of how he took this course on 
the initiative of Mr. Biggar, on April 27 th, 

1875 :- 

" The afternoon questions over, the 
Speaker was about to call on the first 
motion, that of Chaplin, with respect to 
horses, when Biggar, who had made 
several attempts to catch the right hon. 
gentleman's eye, finally succeeded, and 
created a profound sensation by observ- 
ing that he 'believed there were strangers 
in the House.' This action, utterly unpre- 
saged by notice, and absolutely unexpected, 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 91 

was received in dismayed silence. After a 
few minutes' pause the Speaker rose and 
said, 'Do I understand that the hon. 
member for Cavan persists in his inten- 
tion of noticing strangers ? ' 'If you 
please, Mr. Speaker,' replied Mr. Biggar; 
and the House, recovering its voice, broke 
forth in a loud and prolonged groan, amid 
which the sound, perhaps unprecedented 
in the House of Commons, of hissing 
was heard from some members below the 
gangway on the Ministerial side. ' In that 
case,' rejoined the Speaker, ' I have no 
option but to order that strangers should 
withdraw.' The galleries over the clock 
happened to be specially crowded. In 
the Peers' Gallery were the Prince of 
Wales, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord 
Lucan, Lord Grey de Wilton, and other 
peers, attracted by the debate on Chaplin's 
motion. The German Ambassador oc- 
cupied a seat over the clock. The 



92 Newspaper Reporting. 

Prince, the peers, and the ambassador, 
of course, came under the common term 
of " strangers," and met the common fate. 
The only persons other than members 
allowed to remain in the House were 
the ladies in the cage over the Press 
Gallery." 

Disraeli, who was then Premier, in- 
dignantly condemned Mr. Biggar's caprice, 
held that the course he had taken was 
discreditable, and moved the suspension 
of the order requiring the withdrawal of 
strangers. The motion was seconded by 
Lord Harrington, and carried. 

"The Speaker ordered the doors to be 
thrown open, and the members of the 
Press and other ' strangers ' returned, 
among the first to enter being the Prince 
of Wales, who had surveyed the scene 
from the doorway under the gallery. . . . 
Chaplin at once proceeded with his motion. 
... At the outset he observed that a 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 93 

more uncalled-for, a more unwarranted, 
a more offensive mode of interrupting 
business than that from which they had 
just suffered he did not remember. 'The 
hon. member for Cavan,' he added, amid 
cheers, 'appears to forget that he is now 
admitted to the society of gentlemen ' — 
a rebuke at which Mr. Biggar audibly 
chuckled." 

Though it is still possible to exclude 
reporters from the House, it must be 
confessed that the standing order has no 
terrors for "the gallery" men. It is possible 
that, at some crisis in the nation's history, 
they might yet be asked to withdraw. But 
they are no longer bundled out at a mem- 
ber's whim. The old ignorant opposition 
to the Press in Parliament is dead. The 
reporters have no need to get into the 
House by stealth to take fugitive notes ; 
they have no need to cloak anybody's 
speech under the flimsy disguise of ^The 



94 Neivspaper Reporting. ' 

Debates in Lilliput." Parliament and 
people alike recognise the valuable work 
done in the reporters' gallery — a gallery 
that has become a necessity to the politi- 
cal and legislative life of the country. 

The expansion of the parliamentary re- 
porting has been enormous since Cave 
first crept into the House. "The gallery" 
behind the Speaker's chair is now crowded 
with pressmen whenever there is a debate 
worth listening to, and the staffs of the 
newspapers — as given on the opposite page 
— have seats in it. 

The Time? chief has the place of honour 
in the centre of the gallery, and the repre- 
sentatives of other newspapers have seats 
right and left in the order indicated. 
There are about two hundred and fifty 
tickets issued by the sergeant-at-arms to 
leader writers, correspondents, summary 
writers, and reporters; and no one is 
permitted to enter the reporters' gallery 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 95 





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g6 Newspaper Reporting. 

without a ticket. With the exception of 
those issued to leader writers, all the 
tickets are non-transferable; but they also 
admit to the gallery of the House of 
Lords, though from time to time the Gen- 
tleman Usher of the Black Rod issues 
special tickets — on the rare nights, for 
instance, when the House of Peers awakes 
from its dignified repose, and debates 
some great question with an eloquence 
that surprises the lower House and the 
country. 

Each London morning paper, each news 
agency, each combination of provincial 
journals, and Hansard 1 has its own staff 

1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, the official 
record of the proceedings in Parliament, was not 
originally the work of a special staff of reporters. 
They took their name from Luke Hansard, who 
was born in Norwich in 1752, brought up as a 
printer, went to London with the traditional guinea 
in his pocket, was employed by Hughes, the printer 
to the House of Commons, succeeded to the busi- 
ness, and became widely known for his despatch 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 97 

of parliamentary reporters. A "gallery 
corps" consists of from three to sixteen 
gentlemen of the Press — all expert short- 
hand writers, who can not only take 
notes, but transcribe them. Each London 
newspaper has also a summary writer, 
who likewise manages its corps. Mr. 
Leycester does this duty for the Times; 

and accuracy in printing parliamentary papers and 
debates. He died in 1828, but the business was 
continued by his family. The reports of the 
speeches were taken from the morning papers, 
altered and amplified very often according to the 
member's whim, and have grown into a mighty 
record of forgotten talk, or, as one writer has 
admirably put it, " an embarrassing monument of 
the vanity of our senators." Recently this re- 
porting' work has been undertaken by a company 
that retains, however, the old name. A London 
correspondent, commenting on its task, wrote in 
1889: "This year's Hansard will be considerably 
bulkier than usual, owing to the greater length at 
which speeches have been reported. During the 
session there were 122 sittings, lasting in all for 
1,043 hours, the longest sitting being that of the 
27th and 28th of August, when the House met 

7 



98 Newspaper Reporting. 

Mr. Geddes for the Standard ; Mr. Lucy, 
the Daily News; Mr. Albery, the Daily 
Telegraph; Mr. Peacock, the Morning 
Post; Mr. Fisher, the Daily Chronicle; 
and Mr. G. M. Bussy, the Hansard 
Debates. 

The work of reporting is methodical, 
sometimes monotonous, but it is never 
unpleasant, seldom slavish. Take an 
ordinary night in the House, with a staff 
of six reporters to cope with the speaking. 

at three o'clock and sat for over thirteen hours. 
Hansard shows that 1,625 speeches were made 
by members of the Government and 965 by ex- 
Ministers, that the Speaker spoke 497 times, and 
Mr. Courtney, in the capacity of Deputy Speaker 
and Chairman of Committees, 280 times. In addition 
to these, there were 5,187 speeches by private mem- 
bers, making a total of 8,545 speeches. Mr. W. H. 
Smith appeared before the House as a speech- 
maker 199 times, as against Mr. Gladstone's 42 
times. Irish matters did their share towards 
keeping up the figures, for Mr. A. J. Balfour 
caught the Speaker's eye no times, Mr Sexton 
145 times, and Mr. Healy 129 times." 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 99 

A list is made out at the commencement 
of the sitting something after this fashion : — 

Gentlemen of the Staff. 



Copy letter. 


Time. 


Section A. Mr. Massey . 


3.0 o'clock. 1 


„ B. Mr. Boyd 


3-30 » 


„ C. Mr. Micklethwaite . 


4.0 „ 


„ D. Mr. Goldston . 


4.30 f, 


„ E. Mr. Maxwell . 


5.0 „ 


„ F. Mr. Grant . 


5.30 „ 



Instructions. 

Gladstone, 1st person, fully. 
Churchill, 1st person, cut down. 
Harcourt, 3rd person, good summary. 
Remainder of debate must be kept to lines. 

Mr. Massey, according to this reporters' 
time-table, occupies his seat in the gallery 
half an hour, during which his book may 
become well filled with shorthand notes, 
or he may find the speakers say little 
that needs reporting. Whether he gets 

1 The House now meets at three o'clock. 



100 Newspaper Reporting, 

much on his book or not, he has two hours 
and a half in which to transcribe his notes, 
to write them out in longhand for the 
newspaper he represents, inasmuch as Mr. 
Boyd, Mr. Micklethwaite, Mr. Goldston, 
Mr. Maxwell, and Mr. Grant each have a 
turn of half an hour's duration, and it is 
six o'clock before Mr. Massey is required 
to re-enter the gallery to take up the next 
turn. If Mr. Massey's first half-hour's duty 
has yielded nothing important, and he has 
only a few lines to write, he may go into 
the smoke-room, and get a soothing whiff 
from his well- seasoned pipe ; or into the 
tea-room, where there is food not only 
for the body, but the mind — newspapers, 
magazines, and a library of about three 
hundred volumes ; or into the dining-room, 
where it is possible to obtain a good dinner 
and pleasant chat. 

But if Mr. Gladstone gets up, or Lord 
Randolph Churchill rises, during Mr. 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 101 

Massey's take, his pencil has to speed 
across his note-book ; page after page of 
grammalogues and phraseograms are dotted 
down. There is no opportunity for smoke- 
room gossip. The reporter must hurry to 
one or other of the writing-out rooms, work 
incessantly until he has put Mr. Gladstone's 
or his lordship's utterances into longhand ; 
and then it may be time for him to go 
into the gallery again. 

So the modern system of reporting goes 
on throughout the night, quietly, efficiently, 
mingling method with skill and culture, each 
gentleman of the staff not only transcribing 
his notes with rapidity and accuracy, and 
saving many a member's reputation for 
sanity, but being careful to see that his 
copy is properly lettered and folioed, that 
section follows section in alphabetical order, 
— that, in fact, the speech, though reported 
perhaps by six men, reads as smoothly as 
though it had been done by one. 



102 Newspaper Reporting. 

On a big night in the House, however, 
such a small staff is inadequate. Take, for 
instance, the memorable night — April 8th, 
1886 — when Mr. Gladstone introduced his 
Home Rule Bill for Ireland. He was on 
his legs three hours and twenty-five minutes, 
and his speech made between ten and twelve 
columns. It was a night filled with portent 
to the nation. The country thrilled with 
excitement. The House was crowded. 
Nearly all that was distinguished in English 
political and social life was there. It was 
a busy night in the reporters' gallery. 
" Our own correspondent " vividly described 
the scene in many a newspaper — how the 
floor of the House was crammed with 
members ; how the peers were packed in 
their gallery; how the ambassadors, though 
politeness itself, could not in the crush 
refrain from treading on the toes of 
strangers; and what bright eyes shone 
through the grating of the ladies' gallery ! 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 103 

But the special correspondent, who noticed 
every little point — that Mr. Gladstone was 
dressed with unusual care, and wore "a 
faint yellowish pink flower in his button- 
hole ; " or that Lord Hartington sat with 
his arms folded, and his tall hat tipped on 
the end of his nose — had an easy time 
compared to the reporters. Nearly every 
daily paper had sent out the instruction, 
" Gladstone, first person, verbatim." Twelve, 
sixteen, even twenty reporters formed the 
corps of some newspapers ; and the half- 
hour " turns " were suspended for three, 
five, or ten minute takes, the reporters 
deftly working hand over hand, section by 
section; so that when Mr. Gladstone re- 
sumed his seat at eight o'clock in the 
evening, having spoken since thirty-five 
minutes past four o'clock in the after- 
noon, nearly the whole of -his speech, sent 
either by telephone or messenger, was in 
the offices of the London morning papers, 



104 Newspaper Reporting. 

and also on the wires for the country. It 
was an anxious time in many a telegraph 
office and in many a sub-editor's room, but 
the speech, which contained 24,700 words, 
was nearly all in type in Manchester, Leeds, 
and Edinburgh before midnight — before the 
great statesman who delivered it had emp- 
tied his pomatum pot of voice restorative 1 
and gone home to bed. 

Smart though he may have proved him- 
self elsewhere, a reporter who is just 



1 This pomatum pot has become indispensable 
to Mr. Gladstone's oratory. It gravely takes its 
place in the House whenever he is intent upon 
a great speech, and it played a particularly pro- 
minent part when he brought forward his five 
resolutions on the Eastern Question in the early 
part of the session of 1877. Mr. Lucy, describing 
the scene, or rather the pot, says : "It was an 
odd thing to see Gladstone just now taking ad- 
vantage of the pause occasioned by the ringing 
cheers his eloquence drew forth to seize a short, 
thick-set pomatum pot, remove the cork, and 
proceed to refresh himself. History will scorn to 



/ 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 105 

beginning his career on a parliamentary 
corps cannot fail, writes an accomplished 
journalist now in the gallery, to be impressed 
with the difficulties peculiar to the work. 
If his first " turn " should happen to be at 
" question time," he must be forgiven indeed 
for entertaining a feeling almost of despair. 
There is first and foremost the difficulty 
of hearing. Sitting aloft, he sees below 
him a body of four or five hundred 
gentlemen, any one of whom may suddenly 
rise and put an unexpected question, and 



mention that modest pomatum pot, oval in shape, 
four inches in height, and supplied with an ill-fitting 
cork that baffled the frenzied efforts of the orator 
to replace it. And yet peradventure, without the 
assistance of this glass bottle, with its mysterious 
contents that looked like melted pomatum and 
might have been egg and sherry, we should never 
have had this great speech, with its broadly based 
arguments, its towering eloquence, and its subdued 
tone of triumph, proclaiming the accustomed scorn 
which minorities have for the brute force of 
numbers." 



1 06 Newspaper Reporting. 

the Minister as often as not gives a reply 
in a tone which suggests that the answer 
is intended for that hon. member's private 
and particular ear. In the set answers to 
printed questions, again, some Ministers 
speak in such a perfunctory fashion, that 
they are audible only in certain parts of 
the gallery. Then you want to know the 
names of the questioners or speakers, and 
must have some acquaintance with the 
forms of the House. It is necessary, more- 
over, to keep up with current events, 
and there are occasions when to know, 
say, the purport of the last telegram from 
the Soudan, or to have some knowledge 
of the most recent " Incident with Portugal," 
makes all the difference in the world so 
far as reporting is concerned. By-and-by 
most of these difficulties disappear, but 
that of hearing is ever with you. Your 
ears, with practice, become longer, accous- 
tically speaking; but in redacting your 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 107 

notes of questions and answers at least 
you are frequently more or less dependent 
on your comrades. The staffs of the 
several papers represented in the House 
vary in number, that of the Times, of 
course, heading the list; while the pro- 
vincial papers, some of which do not aim 
at a report of any considerable length, 
come last with three or four men each. 
This, however, does not apply to the 
Scotsman and Glasgow Herald newspapers, 
which have corps equal to those of some 
of the London dailies, and give even ampler 
reports than most of them. The "turns." 
vary according to circumstances. In " ques- 
tion time" they rarely exceed a quarter of 
an hour or twenty minutes on any staff, 
and the same holds good while speeches 
of prime importance are being delivered. It 
is customary for the reporter who is next 
in rotation to his colleague in the box to 
be in waiting a few minutes before the 



108 Newspaper Reporting. 

appointed time, with a view to gather up 
the threads of the debate. On leaving the 
box, the reporter repairs to one of the writing- 
rooms. Of these there are a suite, well- 
appointed and comfortable. The "black" 
room — so called from the colour of the 
desks — and " No. 18 " — a large committee- 
room in one of the corridors — are the most 
frequented; but there are smaller rooms 
just outside the gallery, and there is another 
room, with seats for about twenty, where you 
may smoke while you write. This latter 
is in addition to the smoke-room proper. 
It seldom happens that a reporter is unable 
to finish his redaction by the time he is 
again due in the gallery, for either he has 
ample time for the purpose owing to the 
strength of the staff, or he condenses. It 
frequently happens, indeed, during a dull 
debate, or while the House is in committee, 
that he is able to write out his turn in 
the box, and he has thus a considerable 



Reporting To- Day in the House. 109 

interval which he may devote to himself. 
At these times — and there is generally 
a slack period of a couple of hours every 
night during the most important debates 
— he is able to dine or to spend a quiet 
hour in the smoke-room or in the tea- 
room. The authorities of the House 
some years ago placed a spacious room at 
the disposal of the gallery as a dining- 
room. The smoke-room, though not large, 
is comfortable ; and here you may read the 
newspapers or play a game of draughts, or 
chess. The tea-room, a chamber of about 
the same size, is furnished with newspapers, 
magazines, and books. The whole of the 
arrangements affecting the convenience and 
comfort of the reporters are under the con- 
trol of a committee, elected annually from 
among and by the holders of non-trans- 
ferable tickets. The transferable tickets, by 
the way, are used by leader writers and by 
reporters who are drafted in to give assist- 



1 1 o Newspaper Reporting. 

ance on very busy nights. In the House 
of Lords the boxes are allotted to the 
London papers- with two or three ex- 
ceptions ; but such of the provincial papers 
as desire to have special reports of the 
proceedings of this chamber find no 
difficulty in obtaining a seat on the bench 
behind. The difficulties of hearing in this 
building are, as is well known, even greater 
than in the other House, and many 
amusing stories are told of the blunders 
which the reporter has fallen into in conse- 
quence. Immediately adjoining the Lords' 
gallery there is a spacious writing-room 
for the use of the reporters ; but no other 
conveniences are provided, — and, indeed, 
they are unnecessary, the sittings) as a rule, 
being brief, and the reporters at once be- 
taking themselves to the Commons. 

"An interesting part of parliamentary re- 
porting," writes Mr. William Maxwell in an 
article on "Parliamentary Reporters," "is 



Reporting To-Day in tJie House. 1 1 1 

that known as ' lobbying.' The privilege of 
entering the lobby is enjoyed by a repre- 
sentative of each of the London newspapers 
and by provincial journals that have direct 
representatives in the gallery. Having 
carefully studied the morning and evening 
papers, and jotted down a few items upon 
which the public may show some curiosity, 
the lobby-man enters the square chamber 
at the entrance to the House and mingles 
w T ith the members. At first he is disposed 
to welcome the advances of every parlia- 
mentary representative, but experience 
teaches him that those who are most 
anxious to cultivate this source of publicity 
are not always the men who have the in- 
formation to give in exchange. He quickly 
learns who are in the confidence of promi- 
nent politicians, and who are their acknow- 
ledged intermediaries. The moment a man 
is in office he becomes as close as an oyster, 
and avoids the lobby to communicate his 



112 Newspaper Reporting. 

information to favoured journals in a more 
private way. Mr. Gladstone is never seen 
in the lobby, though his son, Mr. Herbert 
Gladstone, serves the purpose, and put 
forward the memorable feeler on Home 
Rule. Mr. Chamberlain has for his hench- 
men Mr. Jesse Collings and Mr. Powell 
Williams, and Lord R. Churchill communi- 
cates through Mr. Hanbury and Mr. 
Jennings. Mr. W. H. Smith is never 
visible in this haunt of gossips, except 
when he enters the room of the Conservative 
Whip, who, with the Liberal Whip, is re- 
garded as the official source of news. The 
hour of interviewing is immediately after 
Questions, or after dinner, when some mem- 
bers are not quite so reticent as they after- 
wards suppose. An accidental hint may 
lead to the disclosure of a confidential 
document, although such disclosures are 
not always the result of accident so much 
as of design. Mr. Lucy, who ' lobbies ' for 



Reporting To-Day in the House. 113 

a syndicate of six newspapers, and Mr. W. 
Ernest Pitt, who has charge of the interests 
of the Press Association, 1 are two of the most 
prominent lobby-men. Mr. Harry Furniss 
also ' lobbies ' for Punch. Talking with a 
journalist, he transfers in a few strokes upon 
a piece of cardboard in the palm of his 
hand those striking caricatures that adorn 
the ' Essence of Parliament. y In this respect 
he resembles Mr. Leslie Ward, 'Spy,' and 
differs from the late Mr. Pellegrini, the 



1 The mention of the Press Association, established 
in 1868 by a syndicate of newspaper proprietors tor 
the supply of news, reminds one of the best known 
journalistic figure connected with it — Mr. Walter 
Hepburn. His skill as a reporter, his wide and 
varied experience, and his high personal qualities, 
have won for him the respect and regard of all 
connected with the profession. Statesmen are proud 
to acknowledge him. No Gladstone visit is complete 
without him; indeed, the leader of the Liberal 
Party, referring not long ago to the work of pressmen 
in relation to politics, spoke of Mr. Hepburn as " my 
esteemed friend." 

8 



1 1 4 Newspaper Reporting. 

'Ape,' of Vanity Fair, who would study a 
member in the lobby for an hour or two, 
and then go home to draw those marvellous 
likenesses." 

The reporters' gallery, which has been 
the scene of many changes during the 
present century, is now threatened with 
a novel invasion. Women have lately, 
for the good or evil of the country, entered 
into competition with men. They have 
become typewriters, workers of the telegraph 
and the telephone, clerks, printers, com- 
mercial travellers, doctors, dabblers in educa- 
tion, literature, and politics. One of their 
latest fields of enterprise is that of journalism ; 
and they are quite prepared to describe a 
fashionable wedding or a Royal visit, to 
attend an execution or go at a moment's 
notice to the seat of war, to criticise the 
Government at home in big type, or to 
settle the Eastern Question in a column 
"leader." There is no telling to what 



Reporting To-day in the House. 115 

altitude their pertinacity and feminine ambi- 
tion may lift them. It is possible that before 
the new century grows old England may 
have a female Prime Minister, and be de- 
fended by an Amazonian army. Women 
already take part in our local government 
— they may ultimately take part in our 
Imperial government, and spinster and 
matron sit at Westminster as the duly 
elected representatives of important con- 
stituencies. 

Hitherto fairly content with her reign at 
home, woman has now determined to assume 
a more conspicuous position in English life 
beyond her own fireside. She intends to go 
her own way, and, adopting Shakespeare's 
words, says, — 

v . . . Being a woman, I will not be slack 
To play my part in fortune's pageant ; " 

consequently man must accept the inevit- 
able, for it is idle to attempt to check the 



1 1 6 Newspaper Reporting. 

wind, or the incoming tide, or a woman's 
tongue. The modern woman, whether 
sweetly persuasive or aggressive, manages 
somehow to get what she wants ; and as she 
has decided to enter the reporters' gallery, 
it is foolish of "my lords and gentlemen" 
to endeavour to keep her out. Already she 
has made formal application for admission 
to it. 

Mr. Bradlaugh, rising in his place in 
the House of Commons on March 18th, 
1890, asked whether, if a vacancy occurred 
in* the reporters' gallery, there was any 
order of the House which would prevent 
the entertainment of an application from 
a lady for a place in that gallery. 

The Speaker replied : " There is no order 
of the House against a lady being admitted 
as a reporter to the reporters' gallery. 
Within the last two or three days an appli- 
cation has been made to the Sergeant-at- 
Arms by a lady, stating that she was the 



Reporting To-day in tlie House. 117 

representative of a journal which advocated 
the political and social rights of women. 
The Sergeant-at-Arms, as I think very 
properly, replied that he had no authority 
to depart from the existing practice, nor 
would it be right for me to intervene in 
any way, unless I have the direct and 
express sanction of the House, in a matter 
possibly leading to consequences which it 
would be difficult at this moment for the 
House to foresee." 

To quote the saying of a witty journalist, 
most people would think "The incident is 
now closed." But the Speaker, learned in 
the forms of the House, and possessing an 
exact estimate of his own authority, can 
have little knowledge of the female mind if 
he imagines that this lady will be checked, 
or put off, by such a reply. The con- 
sequences — whatever they are — will not 
appal her. The novelty will wear off. 
The woman will twist the House and its 



1 1 8 Newspaper Reporting. 

hon. members round "her little finger," 
she will make a complete conquest of the 
Speaker, captivate the Sergeant-at-Arms, and 
with a smile on her face take her seat among 
the gentlemen of the Press in " the gallery," 
and begin a new era of reporting in Parlia- 
ment. 



V, 
A Gossip about Shorthand. 



CHAPTER V. 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 




T is impossible to report verbatim 
a speech, for instance, like Mr. 
Gladstone's on the Home Rule 
question without the help of shorthand ; 
and in the reporters' gallery every variety 
of shorthand is written, perhaps, with the 
exception of the system Xenophon used in 
taking down the words of Socrates, or that 
of the Mexican reporters, who, according 
to Prescott, came down and interviewed 
Cortes, writing in hieroglyphics all they saw, 
and returning rapidly with the drawings to 
the king. 



122 Newspaper Reporting. 

Shorthand is no new-fangled notion. The 
scholar, the statesman, and the man of 
business have for centuries sighed for, and 
striven to get, a briefer system of writing 
than longhand. And though the history of 
shorthand, like the history of the Press, is 
a history of progress, yet it is singular to 
find signs in Roman stenography and in 
Greek shorthand very similar to those that 
ornament or disfigure the modern reporter's 
note-book. 

That the Roman notarii attained pro- 
ficiency in the art of shorthand writing is 
evident from the translation of Caesar's 
speech in the Senate on the fate of Catiline, 
— a speech in the first person, though 
apparently not verbatim ; a speech interest- 
ing, as showing the difference in the oratory 
of that and our own time. Caesar did not 
crane forward on his seat, fidget about, and 
try in a white-heat to " catch the Speaker's 
eye." Nor did he begin his speech with 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 123 

the mysterious expression, "Mr. Speaker/'' 
that falls so glibly from the lips of some 
of our own members of Parliament. His 
speech might be studied with advantage 
by many a politician who bores the House, 
even while flattering himself that he is an 
orator. 

" Conscript Fathers," he said, with dignity, 
" it becomes all men who deliberate on 
^doubtful matters to clear their minds of 
hatred, friendship, wrath, and pity, because 
there can be no perception of the truth 
where these obstruct ; nor can any one, I 
care not who, fulfil at the same time the 
impulses of inclination and the dictates of 
duty." There is neither personality nor 
slang in the speech, which reaches the zenith 
of its declamation in the phrase "By the 
immortal gods," and contains the remarkable 
passage, "So far as the question of the 
penalty is concerned, indeed we are able to 
say this, as the matter stands, that in grief 



124 Newspaper Reporting. 

and care death is a relief from affliction and 
not a punishment, that it eliminates all the 
miseries of mortals, and that beyond its 
bourne there is no place either for sorrow 
or for joy." 

Roman shorthand, like the Roman Em- 
pire, declined and fell ; but the desire for 
swift writing broke out in other lands, and 
nearly every Continental nation has to-day 
its particular system of shorthand, the 
development of, or improvement upon, 
some cruder style introduced years ago. 
A story from the Arabic of Abu Mu- 
hammad Ben Ishah tells how a China- 
man, " who had acquired the Arabic 
speech and writing in less than five 
months, took down from the lips of one 
of his teachers sixteen books of Galen." 
This story may be true, though it sounds 
like an extract from The Arabian Nights' 
Entertainment ; but it is possible to believe 
the statement that stenography was known 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 125 

in Russia in the latter part of the seven- 
teenth century, " when a certain Pro- 
fessor Wolke used to reproduce discourses 
by means of his own system of shorthand." 
France has been striving, with more or less 
zeal, since the reign of Louis XIV., to 
bring out a perfect system of stenography ; 
\and in Germany the names Gabelsberger 
and Stolze are inseparable from similar 
efforts. 

England, however, has been more pro- 
lific in the invention and adaptation of 
shorthand systems. It is a fact, proved 
by MSS. in the British Museum, that 
Charles I. wrote shorthand, and that the 
Marquis of Worcester invented one mode 
of writing it. Since the publication of 
Bright's system in 1588, a great number 
of English shorthand alphabets have been 
given to the world, the most conspic- 
uous among them being Bales', in 1597 ; 
Gurney's, 1753; Byrom's, 1767; Blanchard's, 



126 Newspaper Reporting. 

3779 ; Taylor's, 1788 ; and Pitman's, 
1838. 

There is only one original copy of Dr. 
Bright's book remaining. It is in the 
Bodleian Library, but there is a reprint 
of it in the Bailey collection of shorthand 
works now on the shelves of the Man- 
chester Reference Library. The title of 
the book is very quaint, — Characterie : An 
Arte of Shorte, Swift, and Secret Writing 
-by Character, invented by Timothe Bright, 
Doctor of Phisike, — and it bears the date 
1588, with the caution, " forbidding all 
other to print the same." The work is 
dedicated to Queen Elizabeth in the 
following words: — 

"Cicero did account it worthie his 
labour, and no less profitable to the 
Roman common weale (most gracious 
Sovereign), to invent a speedie kinde of 
wryting by character, as Plutarch reporteth 
in the life of Cato, the younger. This in- 



A Gossip about Shorthand, 127 

vention was increased afterward by Seneca: 
that the number of characters grew to 
7,000. Whether through injurie of time, 
or that men gave it over for tediousness 
of learning, nothing remaineth extant of 
I Cicero's invention at this day. Upon con- 
sideration of the great use of such a kind 
of writing, I have invented the like : of few 
characters, short and easy, every character 
answering a word: my invention on meere 
English without precept or imitation of 
any. The uses are divers : short, that a 
swift hande may therewith write orations 
or publike actions of speach, uttered as 
becometh the gravitie of such actions, ver- 
batim. Secrete, as no kind of wryting 
like, and herein (besides other properties) 
excelling the wryting by letters and alpha- 
bet, in that, nations of strange language, 
may hereby communicate their meaning 
together in wryting, though of sundrie 
tongues. It is reported of the people of 



128 Newspaper Reporting. 

China, that they have no other kinde, and 
so traffike together many provinces of that 
kingdom, ignorant one of an others speach. 
Their characters are very long, and hard to 
make, that a dozen of mine may be made 
as soon as one of theirs : Besides they 
wanting an alphabet, fall into an infinite 
number, which is a thing that greatly 
chargeth memory and may discourage the 
learner. This my invention I am em- 
boldened to dedicate unto your Majesty, 
in that among other your princelie virtues 
your Majesty is wont to approve of every 
good and profitable learning." 

The rest of the dedication flatters the 
Queen rather at the expense of Cicero ; then 
follows an instruction to the reader how 
the art of Bright's shorthand is to be 
learned. " Thou art first to learn the 
Characterie words by heart, and therewith 
the making of the figure to the character, 
to doo it readily, and clean, then, to be able 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 129 

to join every character to the word pro- 
nounced, without book, or sight of any 
pattern before thee." It is curious that in 
his " Characterie Table " some of the signs 
are exactly like those in Pitman's system — 
for instance, the form for " anoint " is 
exactly like the phonographic sign for 
"account," and the character for the word 
" praise " like the phonographic sign for 
" secrets." The system reveals much thought 
and ingenuity, and in its day must have 
been considered little short of marvellous ; 
yet some of the forms are very clumsy and 
difficult, and the reporter, if he had to 
depend upon this system to-day to note 
down verbatim any statesman's speech, 
would be inclined to break out into swear 
words if he came across many signs such 
as that for " liberalise," a whimsical, intricate 
formation that would check the most reck- 
less pencil in its wildest flight after the 
fastest speaker. 

9 



130 Newspaper Reporting. 

The book-lover would revel in the short- 
hand library in which Bright's " Characterie " 
has the most honoured place. The Bailey 
collection consists of no fewer than seven 
hundred volumes, and these contain prac- 
tically all that the English mind has con- 
ceived in the shape of swift writing. Many 
of the books are yellow with age, curious in 
illustration and typography, and all interest- 
ing as showing the steady growth of shorthand 
during the past three centuries. 

One of the most interesting is the second 
edition, published in 1627, of Edmund 
Willis's book, "An Abbreviation of Writing 
by Character, wherein is summarily contained 
a Table which is an Abstract of the whole 
Art, with Plaine and Easie Rules for the 
speedy performance thereof without any 
other Tutor." Some of the signs he gives 
are a ' strange jumble ; but the book is 
valuable, not only because of its striving 
after a better system of writing, but because 



A Gossip about Shorthand, 131 

of the good advice it gives to the learner — 
advice as applicable to him now as at the 
time this old faded book was new and 
bright with its red-ink characters sprinkling 
its pages. " For the more plainnesse in 
reading this art, you must keep your 
stops. . . . And for your better perfection 
in this art, take one observation more from 
me, which is, That when you are in com- 
panie, and heare a word spoken, doe but 
consider in your minde, how you would 
express the same in writing, and the custome 
of this will bring you to great readiness ; as 
I myself by good experience have found." 
On the last page are these fulsome rhymes : — 

" In Laudem Authoris. 

" That which so many have desired to gaine, 
By Wit and Labour of the mind and brain, 
And yet could not, by Reason's carefull eye, 
Find where the depth of Truth's perfections lye : 
Thou hast by Art, upon such Judgement grounded, 

- And so exact a method hath propounded 



132 Newspaper Reporting. 

By Characters, to write with such a speed 
As may of all be thought a worthy Deed : 
In which Rare Art, may well be understood, 
How Willis' Will is to doe all men good." 

"John Willis, B.D.," writes Mr. Axon, 
jun., who has catalogued and mentally 
roamed through these books, " was author of 
the Art of Stenographies the twelfth edition 
of which in the Bailey collection is almost 
unique, no copy being known to Dr. Westby- 
Gibson when he compiled his .exhaustive 
Bibliography of Shorthand. Thomas Shelton's 
Tachygraphy, of which Mr. Bailey had the 
1 64 1 edition, was an important work in 
its day, and, after the fashion of the 
time, the author prefixed to this edition 
commendatory verses — some of them 
marked by fulsome adulation — from various 
of his students. What would be thought 
if a book of the nineteenth century 
were to be heralded, as Shelton's Tachy- 
graphy was, in the following lines, signed 



A Gossip about Shorthand, 133 

by Nath. Mason, of Gonville and Caius 
College ?— 

'"To the Author. 

" 'Why should I praise thy Art in writing, when 
Thy Art and praise surmounts the praise of men ; 
For if thy way of writing had been showne 
To ages past, Printing had ne're beene knowne, 
Nor the invention sought or valued ; when 
The Presse can scarcely overrunne thy Pen : 
So that what honour's due unto the Quill, 
Or glory unto those that have the skill 
In faire Orth.ograph.ie, their titles stand 
As pages to attend upon thy hand.' 

Two of Jeremiah Rich's pretty little 
volumes, measuring only 2 \ by 1 \ inches, are 
in the collection, as is also the anonymous 
first edition of the 'Mercury, or the Secret 
and Swift Messenger ; Shewing, how a man 
may with Privacy and Speed communicate 
his Thoughts to a Friend at any distance,' 
1 64 1. This was written by John Wilkins, 
Cromwell's brother-in-law, who after the 
Restoration became Bishop of Chester and 



134 Newspaper Reporting. 

one of the founders of the Royal Society. 
The second edition of the Mercury, dated 
1694, has the author's name. William 
Mason, a shorthand teacher in London, 
was author of a system which was much 
used in the seventeenth and early in the 
eighteenth centuries. The Bailey collection 
contains several of his numerous works, 
including his earliest, A Pen PlucKd from 
an Eagle's Wing (167 2), and Arts Advance- 
ment (1682). To the latter is prefixed an 
engraved portrait of the author, and under- 
neath appear the following lines, from the 
pen of * S. W.,' which show the rivalry 
that existed then, as now, between authors 
of different systems : — 



'"Let Shelton, Rich, and all the rest go down, 
Bring here your Golden Pen and Laurel Crown, 
Great Mason's nimbler Quill out-strips ye Winde, 
And leaves ye Voyce, almost ye Thoughts behind. 
In vain may Momus snarl; He soares so high, 
Praise he commands, and Envy does defie.' 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 135 

When we consider that Mason's system 
was partly hierogtyphic and required an 
immense amount of memory work to be 
of any use, this praise certainly seems to 
border on exaggeration. Peter Annet, a 
native of Liverpool, is represented by the 
whole of his shorthand books; and John 
Byrom, of Manchester, by four copies of 
his posthumous Universal English Short- 
hand (1767), and by numerous variations 
and improvements by Molineux, Gawtress, 
and others. The whole of the different edi- 
tions of the Polygraph)/ of Aulay Macaulay, 
the St. Ann's Square 1 tea-dealer, are in 
the collection, and the other local systems 
are here in more or less completeness. 
Amongst them may be mentioned the 
Stenography, printed at Poughill in 1806 
by George Nicholson, previously of Man- 
chester, and remembered as one of the 
promoters of cheap and well-got-up books, 
1 St. Ann's Square, Manchester. 



136 Newspaper Reporting. 

and also as an uncompromising advocate 
of a non-flesh diet. In the Rudiments of 
Shorthand, by Thomas Andrews (1744), we 
have a book that has hitherto escaped 
record by bibliographers. Another unre- 
corded and stillborn but pretentious work 
is The World 's Jewel ; or, the Oxford Book of 
Short Hand (1759), by the Rev. Mr. Jonathan 
Smart, who, unlike his predecessors of the 
previous century, who were content to have 
their systems puffed by their friends, pre- 
ferred to do the puffing himself. On his 
title-page we find the following verse, 
presumably his own : — 

"'Go forth, my little Book, and loudly tell, 
If you've an Equal, none can you excel : 
Of this, with justice, truly you may boast, 
All purchase learning, cheaply, at my cost. 
Here Time's well spent — whoever in it looks, 
Aloud proclaims — This is the Book of Books ! ' 

Will it be believed that the ' Book of 
Books' contains only thirty-six duodecimo 



A Gossip about SJtorthand. 137 

,rs° Gurney, Mavor, Pitman, and all 
the modem attempts find a place in the 
collection. Useless systems are sandwiched 
between systems that have done excellent 
service, even if they are now forgotten by 
all but those who, like the late collector 
of this library, find few things so interesting 
as old books. A portion of Mr. Barik 
shorthand library consisted of manuscripts 
written in- shorthand, amongst which may 
be named a beautiful MS. entided A 
Choice Selection of Prose and Poetry, and 
written in shorthand by Peter Robey, at 
Mr. Birchall's School, Manchester, in 
18 18; letters from Cambridge, by Richard 
Clowes, brother of the well-remembered 
Rector of St John's, Manchester; and 
several volumes of the works of Dr. Philip 
Doddridge.'' 

Though Taylor's and Gumey's shorthand 
are somewhat extensively written in the 
reporters' gallery, Pitman's is the most 



138 Newspaper Reporting, 

popular system, and seems likely to increase 
rather than decrease in favour there. 1 

Phonography, as its name implies, is 
a system of writing by sound ; or, in 
other words, the reporter does not take 
down the word according to its spelling, 
but according to its pronunciation. The 
alphabet consists of thin and thick strokes 
and curves for consonants, and dots and 
short strokes for vowels. But the system 
is very much abbreviated by the use of 
grammalogues and phraseograms as the 
learner advances ; so that a student who 
has thoroughly mastered phonography has 
no difficulty in following the most rapid 
speaker. It is a system that has had 
to endure much obloquy. Hundreds of 

1 Of the 94 pressmen in the gallery, 60 write 
Pitman's system, 12 Taylor's, 6 Gurney's, 3 Lewis', 
1 Gurney-Taylor's, I Lowe's, 1 Byrom's, 1 Peachey's, 
1 Everett's, I Melville-Bell's, I Mavor's, I Graham's, 
and 1 Jane's. 



A Gossip about Shorthand. 139 

youths, fired with ambition to get on 
the Press, have sought to acquire a 
knowledge of it. Many have struggled 
through the alphabet, and perhaps a little 
further, and then given up the study in 
despair. But this is not the fault of the 
system : the fault is with the too easily 
daunted student. Nevertheless, the system 
is not perfect ; and one of its most glaring 
defects is the liability — especially in report- 
ing a rapidly delivered speech — to misread 
one word for another, both words having 
exactly the same outlines, and perhaps not 
a vowel to give them individuality. This 
defect has led to many errors and ludicrous 
mistakes in the reporter's copy; but with 
practice and care it is a pitfall that may 
invariably be avoided — nay, is avoided by 
experienced and thoughtful reporters, who 
are not only skilful in note-taking, but use 
their brains, and are wide awake to the 
context, when transcribing. It is possible 



140 Newspaper Reporting. 

that some system of note-taking may yet 
be invented that will put Pitman's entirely 
in the shade — a system easier to learn, 
and less difficult both in writing and 
transcription into longhand ; but phono- 
graphy, with all its faults, will never be 
lightly thrown aside, for a system must 
have some merit in it that enables a re- 
porter to give accurately verbatim speeches 
by such statesmen as Mr. Gladstone, Lord 
Salisbury, Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord 
Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, 
Sir William Harcourt, Mr. John Morley, 
and even Lord Sherbroke. The latter, now 
enjoying the serenity of the Upper House, 
was, before his elevation to the peerage, 
familiarly known among the reporters as 
" Bobby " Lowe. He is one of the most 
difficult speakers of this century to report, 
so peculiar and rapid is his delivery. At 
Grantham, not many years ago, a reporter 
having the misfortune to take a check note 



A Gossip about SJiorthand. 141 

of his speech with a view to obtain accu- 
racy, got into a wild state of exasperation 
at the orator's freaks, and growled, gnawing 
his moustache fiercely, while his pencil 
staggered desperately over his note-book, 
and great drops of perspiration stood on 
his brow : " I would rather report the 
d than ' Bobby ' Lowe ! " 



VI. 

The Reporter's Work. 




CHAPTER VI. 
The Reporter's Work. 

KNOWLEDGE of shorthand, 
and the capacity to write and 
transcribe it, is not by any means 
the only acquirement necessary to make 
a competent reporter; but it is practically 
the foundation on which the reporter 
must build his reputation, and the study is 
advantageous, not merely because of the 
admirable training shorthand gives to hand 
and brain, but because it broadens and en- 
larges the mind, and often instils a desire 
for wider knowledge and greater culture. 
There is a saying, " Once a reporter, 

10 



146 Newspaper Reporting. 

always a reporter;" but the reporters 
themselves have practically shown the 
falsity of this adage by relinquishing 
the note-book and pencil for more am- 
bitious, though not more honourable, 
pursuits. Many men have sprung from 
the reporters' table to eminence — men like 
Charles Dickens, Shirley Brooks, John 
Campbell, and Justice Talfourd. Dr. W. 
Russell, famous as the Times special cor- 
respondent in the Crimea, was a gallery 
man. Sir Charles Russell, Sir Edward 
Clarke, Baron Alderson, . Judge Powell, 
Mr. Registrar Hazlitt, were parliamentary 
reporters. Sir James Hannen was also 
in the gallery, — where, by-the-bye, some 
judge in embryo is probably now taking 
notes. 

A writer in the Entertainment Gazette 
says: "At least, two gallery men of our 
own day have become members of that 
Legislature whose proceedings they had so 



The Reporters Work. 147 

often reported and commented upon. One 
was the late Mr. Dunbar; the other is 
Mr. Justin M'Carthy, whose leaders in the 
Daily News are models of newspaper 
article writing. Mr. Frederick Clifford, 
who was one of the Times 1 parliamentary 
corps of reporters for several years, and 
London correspondent of one of the 
Sheffield papers, left the gallery to act as 
chief sub-editor of the Times. He gained 
some celebrity as a law reporter in con- 
junction with Mr. Pembroke Stephens, 
Q.C., who was also a Times 1 gallery man 
for a long period, relinquishing his press 
work as briefs came in. Mr. Stephens' 
career is, if what the world would call 
uneventful, a remarkable one. He made 
his first essay in parliamentary reporting 
as a member of the Morning Post corps, 
and (as others have done before and since) 
left the Post for the Times. He gained 
his early laurels in the committee-rooms, 



148 Newspaper Reporting. 

local influence securing him any number 
of briefs in Dublin cases brought before 
Select Committees at Westminster, and he 
is one of the few men who have become 
successful both in the realm of journalism 
and at the bar without making a single 
enemy. Mr. Richard Kisbey was another 
Irish barrister-reporter who emigrated from 
the Post to the Times. If he did little 
or nothing at the bar, it was because 
opportunities and briefs never came to him. 
He was an efficient all-round reporter, and, 
with Spellin, may be truly said to have 
died in harness, for in one of his reporting 
expeditions in 1882, for the Times, he 
caught cold from exposure to the fearful 
weather, and was taken from among us in 
his prime. One of the brightest young 
men who ever went into the gallery is 
now part proprietor of the Bristol Daily 
Times and Mirror. Goodenough Taylor 
did two men's work every day of his life 



The Reporters Work, 149 

for close upon fifteen years, and apparently 
throve upon it. From ten to four he was 
at Somerset House in the Legacy-Duty 
Department, from the office he went straight 
down to the House, and did his full share 
of reporting for the Morning Post, and 
between while he was sending telegrams to 
his Bristol paper, then under the joint 
control of Mr. Joseph Leach and Mr. 
'Tom' Taylor (Goodenough's father). 
This was not all. Like most gallery men, 
young Taylor lived at a long distance from 
the scene of his labours, and would often 
walk morning and night some six miles. 
It is very seldom that you find more 
than one member of a family engaged in 
reporting. The Bussys furnish a striking 
exception to the rule. No one who has 
done gallery work during the last five-and- 
twenty or thirty years is unacquainted 
with one or more members of this report- 
ing family. George, Henry, and Bernard 



150 Newspaper Reporting, 

Bussy are all marvellously accurate note- 
takers, and are known far and wide as 
among the ablest men that London has 
ever produced." 

To the list of those who have stepped 
from the reporters' gallery to the floor of 
the House must be added the name of 
Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., a most capable 
and enterprising journalist, who has in 
his conduct of the Star developed entirely 
new features in journalism, opening out 
many additional paths to the reporter and 
the literary man, and doing his work day 
by day with a celerity and dash that has 
sometimes startled more cautious news- 
paper men. Of Mr. Justin McCarthy's 
career some idea may be obtained from 
a reference the hon. member made to it 
in a speech he delivered at the Boston 
Press Club. "I began," he said, "as a 
reporter. I filled various departments of 
journalism; indeed, I endeavoured to filL 



The Reporters Work. 151 

a great many departments which now, in 
my mature years, I know were a good 
deal beyond my strength. In our early 
years we begin fearlessly, and, whether 
we know anything about a person or not, 
with the rare instinct of a journalist, we 
valiantly rush to the front, and we either 
do or we do not do our duty. I have 
acted in almost every department open 
to a journalist. I have been foreign cor- 
respondent ; I have been musical critic — 
I never knew anything about music; I 
have been art critic; and, on one or two 
occasions, I reached the triumph of my 
genius by describing an agricultural show. 
Once only I essayed the part of foreign 
correspondent. I did the coronation of 
a great king, the present Emperor of 
Germany,* and on that occasion I had the 
pleasure to be presented to the greatest 
statesman in Europe, Prince Bismarck. 
* The late German Emperor. 



152 Newspaper Reporting. 

I thought on one occasion of being a war 
correspondent. I had been for some time 
a reporter in the House of Commons, and 
then became foreign editor, and then editor- 
in-chief; and, having climbed to the top 
of the tree, I then climbed down again." 

Mr. W. H. Mudford, the editor of the 
Standard, was a reporter. Mr. W. Senior, 
the angling editor of the Field, and special 
correspondent of the Daily News, was a 
reporter. Mr. H. W. Lucy, appointed 
editor of the latter paper some three years 
ago, still prefers the gallery, and wrote from 
the Reform Club on June 6th, 1887 : " From 
the day I first sat in my editor's chair I 
have hankered after my box in the House of 
Commons, and now I am going back to it" 
Nor do these names exhaust the list of those 
who by ability and indomitable perseverance 
have risen to high positions in the various 
professions after years of reporting toil. 

Some of the men who have made a 



The Reporter's Work. 153 

name graduated in the country, which has 
long been a training-ground for the re- 
porters' gallery, and has sent to London 
many talented journalists. 

There is perhaps no life so varied and 
exciting as that of the reporter on the 
provincial daily — no life perhaps in which 
a man can crowd so much experience. 
For him there is little rest. If he has not 
to rise at daybreak and journey by train 
to a meeting in a town, or in some almost 
inaccessible village, miles away, he may 
saunter down to the office about eleven 
o'clock in the forenoon, and that is probably 
the last opportunity he has for sauntering 
until he goes home, generally after midnight. 
His work is unremitting as a statesman's, and 
frequently more imperative. Here is a record 
of a day's work, taken haphazard out of a 
chief reporter's diary — a list of the day's 
engagements with the initials of the mem- 
bers of the staff attached : — 



154 Newspaper Reporting. 

S. Police and Inquests. 

L. Town Council Committees and Local Im- 
provements. 
P. Steam Tram Accident at Bradford. 
H. Diocesan Conference. 

A. Wife Murder. 

F. Railway Extensions in the West Riding. 

M. Colliery Explosion. 

B. Lord Salisbury at Nottingham. 
J. The Theatres. 

T. Double Execution at Armley. 
R. Lecture on English Humorists. 

C. Burglary. 

W. Bishop of Ripon on Temperance. 

D. Mill Fire. 

In reporting a big political speech — say 
Lord Salisbury is speaking at Manchester, 
Edinburgh, or Leeds — the process is much 
the same as that adopted in reporting 
debates in the House, except that the 
staff consists of what is termed "a ring," 
is made up of one reporter for each 
newspaper requiring a verbatim report, and 
the turns are shorter — two, three, or five 
minutes. About eight reporters are, as a rule 



The Reporters Work. 155 

" in the ring ; " and working in alphabetical 
order, hand over hand, note-taking for two 
minutes, and, transcribing on flimsy, they 
manage to keep written up to the speaker \ 
and soon after the orator has resumed his 
seat, amid the loud and continued cheering 
of his political admirers, the reporter who 
has had the last turn is writing, not without 
secret delight, "End of message." 

Every reporter, no doubt, has a vivid 
recollection of his first admission to "a 
ring." It is a trying time. If you do not 
take a good note, and falter in transcription ; 
if you fail to take up your next turn at the 
moment the chief, watch in hand, gives 
you the hint, the note-taking arrangement is 
thrown out of gear, and all round the ring, 
there is either muttered thunder or icy 
reticence. But with skilful reporters — and 
the men allowed "in the ring " are generally 
known to be thoroughly up to their work 
— the task of reporting a great political 



156 Newspaper Reporting. 

meeting is a comparatively light one. 
There is an exact subdivision of labour. 
Turn after turn is completed with regularity; 
and with a shrewd, imperturbable chief to 
rigidly allot the time, and a nimble comrade 
to collect and assort the flimsy, there is 
scarcely any phase of a reporter's life that 
is pleasanter than "doing a big meeting." 
His anxiety and toil come rather in what 
appears to be less important work. Take 
one day's engagements in the diary, for 
instance. Every engagement takes time to 
fulfil. The information has to be obtained, 
often not without difficulty and annoyance. 
Whether referring to some important 
development of trade, or exploit in ex- 
ploration, or statesman's policy, or despotic 
oppression and cruelty abroad, or great 
disaster in pit at home; whether relating 
to fiendish tragedy, to work of philan- 
thropy, to the splendid courage that now 
and then reveals the true hero in the 



The Reporter's Work. 157 

workshop, or the daring and self-sacrifice 
of our lifeboatmen in the stormiest sea 
that beats upon the coast; whether touch- 
ing upon some noted law case, or new 
scheme of railway enterprise, or modern 
triumph of engineering skill ; or upon the 
latest political craze, the newest fad 
ostensibly for the good of the nation and 
the welfare of the people, but possibly 
advanced to gratify the vanity of or to 
materially benefit the hon. member whose 
pet cause it is, — every jot and tittle of this 
news when obtained, and the libel carefully 
sifted out of it, has to be put in attractive 
form to interest the newspaper reader. 

The reporter, it will be seen, is some- 
times a visitor unwelcome ; for the enraged 
father does not like to be questioned 
about his daughter's elopement, nor does 
the manufacturer, tracked by some vague 
rumour on 'Change, care to disclose to 
the indefatigable and unabashed pressman 



158 Newspaper Reporting. 

the coming downfall of his firm. Whether 
welcome or unwelcome, however, the 
reporter is always busy, devoting the day, 
and frequently the best half of the night, 
to the interests of the paper he represents. 
Not only must he be a capable short- 
hand writer, but a vigorous and pic- 
turesque descriptive writer; and while not 
forgetting what is due to the dignity of the 
Press, he must be a man of the world, 
courteous to high and low. 

Special aptitude, as well as long training, 
are necessary to produce men of this stamp ; 
yet they are to be found in nearly every 
daily newspaper office of any influence in the 
provinces, — men like Mr. R. W. Spencer, 
of the Manchester Guardian, now chief 
of the sub-editorial staff, after a notable 
career as a reporter; Mr. J. Cash, chief 
reporter of the same paper ; Mr. W. Lister, 
of the Manchester Examiner and Times; Mr. 
H. S. Green, of the Manchester Courier ; 



The Reporter's Work. 159 

Mr. W. M. Gilbert, of the Scotsman ; Mr. 
T. Reid, of the Glasgow Herald ; Mr. S. 
Parkinson, of the Yorkshire Post; Mr. 
Carruthers, of the Leeds Mercury; Mr. J. 
Hadley, of the Birmingham Post; Mr. 
Francis Neale, of the Birmingham Daily 
Gazette; Mr. J. Atkins, of the Sheffield 
Independent ; Mr. S. G. Harrison, of the 
Sheffield Daily Telegraph; Mr. W. 
Heenan, of the Newcastle Chronicle ; Mr. 
W. J. Snowdon, of the Newcastle Daily 
Journal ; Mr. J. Jenkins, of the Liverpool 
Daily Post ; Mr. J. B. Mackenzie, of the 
Liverpool Mercury; Mr. T. J. McWeeney, 
of the Freeman's Journal ; Mr. G. K. 
Magee, of the Irish Times ; Mr. H. Bond, 
of the Dublin Daily Express ; Mr. Taylor, 
of the York Herald; Mr. Mallett, of the 
Bradford Observer ; Mr. A. L. Maddock, 
of the Nottingham Guardian — and the list 
might be greatly extended, — experienced 
chiefs, directing large and efficient report- 



160 Newspaper Reporting, 

ing corps, from the ranks of which, now 
and then, men enter the Press Gallery of 
the House of Commons, Qr join the 
descriptive staffs of the London morning 
newspapers, or climb into the editorial 
chair, or strive, and sometimes successfully, 
for fame in the wider field of English 
literature. 



VII. 



Some Experiences and Adventures 
of Reporters. 



ii 



CHAPTER VII. 

Some Experiences and Adventures of 
Reporters. 




HE reporter has never found life 
monotonous. His exciting expe- 
riences began early. The Emperor 
Severus cut the finger nerves and sentenced 
to transportation a stenographer who had 
the misfortune to misreport a cause in 
the Imperial Court. Cassien, a shorthand 
writer at the trial of Metellus, the centu- 
rion, was treated with even greater cruelty. 
The accused, having become a Christian, 
had declined to serve as a soldier, and 
seems to have aroused the reporter's sym- 
pathy. " Being exasperated at what he con- 



164 Newspaper Reporting. 

sidered the unjust decision of the judge," 
says Anderson, in his History of Shorthand, 
"the shorthand writer launched at the 
magistrate's head his tablets. For this all 
too speedy impulse he was ordered to 
sympathise more fully with the centurion 
whose cause he so warmly espoused, and 
with whom he had to suffer death, the 
judge, with grim humour, appointing the 
pupils of the unhappy man to be his 
executioners, and the instruments of execu- 
tion their iron styles, with which they 'tore 
him to pieces,' reciting, as they did so, 
' Why do you complain ? 'Twas yourself 
who gave us the iron and armed our hand ; 
this is the way we pay you back the 
thousand notes you taught us, and which, 
spite of our tears, you made us learn.' " 

Something of the same spirit lingers in 
our own time, for not long ago the member 
for an English mining constituency, enraged 
at the report, or misreport, of his speech on 



Experiences and Adventures, 165 

the vexed question of capital and labour, 
sent this telegram to the editor of a York- 
shire daily : " Your reporter deserves 
lynching." 

The special correspondent, a man like 
Russell or Forbes, is expected to meet with 
adventure and peril — he is paid to undergo 
the hazard of war ; but the daily newspaper 
reporter, though his only glimpse of the 
battlefield, perhaps, has been the autumn 
manoeuvre and the sham-fight, is frequently 
in danger almost as great as Russell's in the 
Crimea, and that through which Forbes came 
scathless in the grim engagement at Plevna. 
In The Life of Charles Dickens, by John 
Forster, it is shown that the novelist, dur- 
ing his career as a reporter on the Morning 
Chronicle, had one or two narrow escapes, at 
least, of breaking his neck. " I have had," 
Dickens wrote, " to charge for half a dozen 
breakdowns in half a dozen times as many 
miles. I have had to charge for the damage 



1 66 Newspaper Reporting. 

of a great-coat from the drippings of a blazing 
wax candle in writing through the smallest 
hours of the night in a swift-flying carriage 
and pair. I have had to charge for all 
sorts of breakages fifty times in a journey 
without question, such being the ordinary 
results of the pace which we went at. I 
have charged for broken hats, broken lug- 
gage, broken chaises, broken harness — 
everything but a broken head, which is the 
only thing they would have grumbled to 
pay for." 

At the second annual dinner of the 
Newspaper Press Fund, in 1865, he spoke 
in a similar strain, saying: "I have often 
transcribed for the printer, from my short- 
hand notes, important public speeches in 
which the strictest accuracy was required, 
and a mistake in which would have been 
to a young man severely compromising, 
writing on the palm of my hand, by the 
light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise 



Experiences and Adventures. 167 

and four, galloping through a wild country, 
and through the dead of the night, at the 
then surprising rate of fifteen miles an 
hour. The very last time I was at Exeter, 
I strolled into the castle yard there to 
identify, for the amusement of a friend, 
the spot on which I once * took,' as 
we used to call it, an election speech 
of Lord John Russell at the Devon con- 
test, in the midst of a lively fight 
maintained by all the vagabonds in that 
division of the county, and under such a 
pelting rain that I remember two good- 
natured colleagues who charteed to be at 
leisure held a pocket-handkerchief over 
my note-book, after the fashion of a State 
canopy in an ecclesiastical procession. I 
have worn my knees by writing on them on 
the old back row of the old gallery of the 
old House of Commons ; and I have worn 
my feet by standing to write in a prepos- 
terous pen in the old House of Lords, 



1 68 Newspaper Reporting. 

where we used to be huddled together like 
so many sheep — kept in waiting, say, until 
the Woolsack might want re-stuffing. Re- 
turning home from exciting political meet- 
ings in the country to the waiting press in 
London, I do verily believe I have been 
upset in almost every description of vehicle 
known in this country. I have been, in 
my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards 
the small hours, forty or fifty miles from 
London, in a wheelless carriage, with ex- 
hausted horses and drunken postboys, and 
have got back in time for publication, to 
be received with never-forgotten compli- 
ments by the late Mr. Black, coming in 
the broadest Scotch from the broadest of 
hearts I ever knew." 

These exploits are worth recording ; but 
in the reporter of to-day they arouse no 
surprise, for he has often in the course of 
his duty to go through more exciting ex- 
periences than ever fell to the lot of the 



Experiences and Adventures. \6g 

author of Pickwick, and never thinks he has 
performed any feat at all. The reporter of 
to-day has to be courageous, sharp as a hawk, 
mentally untiring, physically enduring. He 
comes* in contact with everybody, from 
monarchs to beggars, from noblemen to 
nobodies. He sees the tragedy and comedy 
of human life, its cynicism and toadyism, its 
patient, struggling, and feverish ambition, 
its sham and subterfuge, its lavish wealth 
and deepest poverty, its joy and sorrow, its 
good deeds and most hideous crimes. His 
is a strange career, with its constant pre- 
dicaments, difficulties, and anxieties ; but it 
is an attractive, fascinating career to many 
because of its wondrous variety. 

Thunder threw Caesar into convulsions; 
but a reporter will cheerfully go up in a 
balloon to get facts about a thunderstorm. 
Nothing daunts him. If his chief only " puts 
him down " in the diary for the most perilous 
engagement, he will prove as full of — 



170 Newspaper Reporting, 

"Adventurous spirit 
As to o'erwalk a current roaring loud, 
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear." 

When " on duty " he does not admit 
the word danger into his vocabulary. He 
will risk death at a Fenian meeting, go 
down a pit choked with after-damp, pene- 
trate into the vilest fever den, take notes in 
the midst of a riot, disguise himself as a 
tramp and sleep in a lodging-house — go any- 
where and report anything at any time 
of the day or night, armed only with his 
pencil and note-book, and a splendid self- 
reliance. 

He rises, as eagerly as a trout to a fly, at 
a railway accident or a colliery explosion ; 
but they must be "serious," "alarming," 
" fearful," " terrible," before " he lays 
himself out," before he nerves himself to 
write graphically about these disasters. 
Nothing upsets him. Had he been in 
Pompeii when the city was buried by the 



Experiences and Adventures. 171 

volcano's outpourings, his only anxiety 
would have been to get off a good account — 
about a column — to the newspaper he repre- 
sented, and also to the journals for which he 
corresponded on salary or at so much per line. 
Not long ago a breathless citizen, covered 
with brickdust, that brought out in pic- 
turesque boldness the whimsical ridges in 
his crushed hat — the man had just narrowly 
escaped death — rushed into the office of a 
well-known English daily, and said that a 
fearful boiler explosion had just occurred 
at some works not far away. " Is it a good 
thing ? " asked the reporter. " Anybody 
killed?" Though this gentleman of the 
Press is one of the most tender-hearted of 
men, he looks upon disaster and tragedy 
chiefly through professional spectacles, 
gauging their importance not so much on. 
account of the suffering and grief that 
follow, but according to the sensation they 
. are likely to create in the newspaper. 



172 Newspaper Reporting, 

The reporter's versatility is boundless. 
No subject is too strange or too abstruse 
for his pen. He will describe the grim 
horror of a private execution, the perils of 
shipwreck, and the marriage festival with 
equal facility. 

Now and then he makes the most mirth- 
provoking errors — for instance, when he 
speaks of "Helen of Troy" as "Ellen of Troy," 
and reports the Earl of Carnarvon as saying, 
"In these days clergymen are expected to 
have the wisdom and learning of a journey- 
man tailor," instead of "the wisdom and 
learning of Jeremy Taylor." 

The Dean's face would pucker with fun 
when, after the debate on vestments in 
the Chapter House of Wells Cathedral, at 
which he said, "If some one should feel 
disposed to make me a present of a 
cope with decent sleeves I shall have no 
objection to wear it in the cathedral," he 
found himself reported in a London daily 



Experiences and Adventures. 173 

as ready "to conduct Divine service in a 
coat with a dozen sleeves." 

The late Bishop Fraser no doubt laughed 
heartily when he read the report of his speech 
on waifs and strays — a speech that gave him 
credit for wondrous solicitude on behalf of 
the homeless youth of Manchester. " We 
take these children out of the street," said 
his lordship, "we clothe them, we tend 
them, we watch over them." And the 
reporter of one of the morning papers made 
the Bishop say of the lucky outcasts, "We 
take these children out of the street, we 
clothe them, we tend them — we wash them." 
What a splendid example of self-sacrifice 
and "good works" Bishop Fraser must have 
given when he picked a city Arab out of 
the throng of the Manchester Piccadilly, took 
him home, and washed him ! 

But the humour of it is eclipsed by 
many other slips. " My brethren," remarked 
an eminent divine in a cathedral in the 



174 Newspaper Reporting. 

northern province, "all is yellow to the 
jaundiced eye ; " and the reporter tran- 
scribed it, " All is hollow to the jaunty 
style." 

" Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " once 
exclaimed Sir William Harcourt, in one 
of his most emphatic political speeches ; 
and the reporter improved the quotation 
in this novel fashion: "Great Diana! 
What a farce this is ! " — a drastic estimate 
of the statesman's utterances, only outdone 
by Mr. Caine's description of him a session 
or two ago as a " political lurcher." The 
poetic orator who quoted the lines, — 

"O come, thou goddess fair and free, 
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne," 

probably muttered to himself when he 
turned to his own speech in the news- 
paper with delight, and read the practical 
reporter's rendering of the quotation : — 

"O come, thou goddess fair and free; 
In heaven she crept and froze her knee." 



Experiences and Adventures. 175 

More excusable, perhaps, was the reporter's 
error in the transcription of Russell Lowell's 
speech. Describing the throb and move- 
ment of life in London, the American 
author and diplomatist quoted from the 
Earth Spirit's speech in Faust, and given in 
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus : — 

" Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply — 
Weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by," — 

rendered by the reporter " the roaring loom 
of the Times? 

The writer of "Walnuts and Wine," in 
the Yorkshire Weekly Post, gossiping about 
the mistakes of reporters, says: "A rare 
good story from the Irish law courts was 
told recently in the course of the judgment 
delivered by Chief Baron Palles, on the 
application for a new trial of the libel action 
against the Irish Times by Mr. Matthew 
Harris, M.P., who had been awarded 
;£i,ooo damages, the newspaper having 



176 Newspaper Reporting. 

incorrectly reported, by the omission of the 
word ' not,' that Delaney had deposed that 
Mr. Harris was an Invincible. The Chief 
Baron held that the damages were excessive, 
and granted a new trial unless the plaintiff 
agreed to accept ^200, including the ^50 
paid into Court. Baron Dowse concurred, and 
said the damages were not only excessive, 
but preposterous. Mistakes, he said, often 
occurred in papers, and an instance arose 
in reference to himself. Addressing a Cork 
jury, he quoted the well-known line from 
Tennyson's Locksley Hall: — 

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 

What was his horror to find himself reported 
m a local paper as having said, — 

"Better fifty years of Europe thanacircus in Bombay." 

The joke told against the American reporter 
who transcribed an orator's incorrect quota- 
tion Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed major 



Experiences and Adventures. 177 

Veritas, into *I may cuss Plato, I may cuss 
Socrates, said Major Veritas,' is hardly a 
better of its kind than this one of Baron 
Dowse."* 

Another journalist writes : " A compliment 
to the late John Bright was turned into an 
insult : ' I have sat at the feet of the gamecock 
of Birmingham,' should have read ' Gamaliel.' 
Viscount Cranbrook should have been asso- 
ciated with the Low Moor Ironworks, and 
not the Low Moor Workhouse. ' He fleeced 
his thousand flocks,' ought to have been ' he 
leased his thousand lots ; ' and c the blasted 
Irishmen,' that roused the indignation of a 
Celtic reporter against an innocent member, 

* Even a more amusing story is told of another 
reporter's mistranscription of Baron Dowse's words. 
The judge expressed the opinion that Irish justices 
of the peace could no more state a case in legal 
language that they could write a Greek ode ; and 
the reporter gravely wrote: "Baron Dowse ex- 
pressed the opinion that Irish justices of the peace 
could no more state a case in legal language than 
they could ride a Greek goat." 



178 Newspaper Reporting. 

was nothing more than 'the Glasgow Irish- 
men.' These errors are due chiefly to 
imperfect hearing ; a few also may be attri- 
buted to bad writing, as : ' Those lovely eyes 
be damned ; ' and * Behold the martyr with 
his shirt on fire,' for, ' Behold the martyr in 
a sheet of fire.' Inability to hear distinctly 
is the principal difficulty with which reporters 
have to contend, and has led to some 
amusing guesses at truth, as when the Prime 
Minister was reported, with unanimity that 
betrayed careful comparison, to have declared 
that our late representative at Washington 
was in a state of ' suspended animation.' " 

The Archbishop of York, who has an 
infinite sense of humour, must have chuckled 
when he read in a newspaper printed in his 
diocese that he had become a poet. " Those 
beautiful lines by Bishop Ebor," innocently 
wrote the reporter, who knew far more about 
cricket than verse, and had never heard of 
Bishop Heber. 



Experiences aud Adventures. 179 

" Newspaper Reporters and Reporting " 
is the subject of a lecture given by Mr. 
James Stewart, and he chats pleasantly and 
shrewdly about their ways and work. " An- 
other story," he says, "is that of a reporter 
who was not familiar with Tennyson's well- 
known lines : — 

' Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
And simple faith than Norman blood.' 

A speaker concluded an eloquent speech 
by quoting these lines, and he went to sleep 
that night thinking how well the peroration 
would look in type the next morning. His 
feelings may be imagined when he bought 
a copy of the paper, and found that 
his peroration was made to run : * The 
speaker concluded by remarking that in 
his opinion kind hearts were more than 
coronets, and that simple faith was superior 
to Norman blood.' Equally funny are the 
mistakes sometimes made through haste or 
carelessness in transcribing the shorthand. 



i8o Newspaper Reporting. 

1 Breezy atmosphere,' in a recent speech by 
Professor Blackie, in which he was dilating 
on the glories of Edinburgh, became ' greasy 
atmosphere ; ' ■ attenders at clubs in the 
West End,' in a memorable speech of 
Mr. John Bright, was transmogrified into 
( vendors of gloves in the West End ; ' 
1 Died from recent haemorrhage,' the verdict 
of a coroner's jury on the body of a woman, 
was changed into ' Died from her recent 
marriage,' evidently the blunder of some 
misanthropic bachelor reporter. In this 
way, as Professor Blackie said in the letter 
in which he pointed out the above slip in 
his own speech, the reporters are uncon- 
sciously the means of enlivening speeches 
which might otherwise be dull reading. 
Although public meetings receive a great 
deal of his attention, the reporter's duties 
do not by any means end there. He has 
to be equally ready to describe a prize-fight 
or a religious service, an agricultural show 



Experiences and Adventures. 181 

or a wedding, and, especially in the smaller 
towns, to write learnedly on musical art, 
and dramatic matters. His life, although 
pleasant in many ways, is, speaking gene- 
rally, exceedingly laborious, and that the pay 
is not always in proportion may be inferred 
from a recently published report of a suicide, 
which concluded with the remark, ' No 
motive can be assigned for the rash act, as, 
when the man was picked up, the sum of i\d. 
was found in one of his pockets.' Stories 
are told of different kinds of reporters — as, 
for example, of the flowery reporter who 
plays such sad havoc with the Queen's 
English, and who concluded the report of a 
penny reading with the remark that ' On the 
whole, the entertainment was the most mirth- 
provoking and soul-stirring that could be had 
for the money.' " 

There have been few more ludicrous 
errors than that of the reporter who 
commented on the work of the Church 



1 82 Newspaper Reporting, 

Mission in a Yorkshire town some years 
ago, and particularly on the efforts to 
evangelise the local police. "They marched 
into the hall," he wrote, "dressed in a 
uniform of blue and white gloves;" and 
the whole town smiled and marvelled at 
the scanty attire of the police. The re- 
porter, so comical was the mistake, laughed 
as heartily as anybody, and explained the 
error in this way. In the hurry of writing 
he had omitted a comma. The sentence 
should have read, "They marched into 
the hall dressed in a uniform of blue, and 
white gloves." "The printer's error" is 
made the scapegoat of many a reporter's 
blunder and many an editorial slip; still, 
the printer's error sometimes has a little 
diversion on its own account. For instance, 
the reporter on a northern daily who wrote 
that the venerable archdeacon advocated 
" the breaking of bread in the vestry," was 
rather staggered to find next day in the 



Experiences and Adventures. 183 

newspaper that the venerable archdeacon 
had " advocated the breaking of heads in 
the vestry ! " But the flutter in the 
amiable clergyman's breast would be only a 
mild one in contrast to the mingled feelings 
of the brave warrior who at a meeting in 
honour of his home-coming from one of 
our campaigns, was spoken of as " this 
battle-scarred veteran," transcribed by the 
reporter as "this battle-scared veteran;" 
and, with a graceful apology for the printer's 
error, altered the next day to "this bottle- 
scarred veteran!" 

Sometimes the reporter will report a 
lecture a week before it is really delivered, 
or get hold of a last year's concert 
programme and criticise the singing of 
vocalists who may not be singing at all 
now. And the reporter has been known, 
so erratic is genius, to kill many a man in 
the newspaper before the man has expired 
in the flesh. 



1 84 Newspaper Reporting. 

To his confidence — some people call it 
assurance — there is no limit ; still, he cannot 
always avoid awkward positions. Newspaper 
competition in these days is .very keen, 
and in some instances there is barely time 
to procure the news, much less carefully 
verify it. An evening paper not long 
since published a paragraph announcing the 
failure of a firm of sharebrokers. After 
a few copies had been rattled off the 
machine a doubt arose as to whether the 
intelligence was accurate, and a reporter 
went in a hansom to the house of a member 
of the firm. The stockbroker, unconscious 
of the notoriety he was achieving in com- 
mercial circles, was at dinner. The reporter ' 
was a very frank reporter. He rang the 
bell, was ushered into the hall, sent in his 
card, and obtained an interview. "Pray 
excuse me for disturbing you at dinner," 
he said ; " but is it true you've failed ? " 
It was not true, and that reporter, although 



Experiences and Adventures. 185 

a man of considerable sang-froid, regained 
the hansom speedily. 

It is well known on the Press that if 
a railway disaster occurs the officials of 
the company know nothing, or often pre- 
tend to know nothing, about it. Nearly 
all are mum! mysterious and mute as the 
Sphinx. It is difficult to get meat out of 
a dog's throat; but this is a recreation 
compared to the task of eliciting informa- 
tion from railway officials as to accidents 
on the line. The reporter, nevertheless, 
is obliged to get the information quickly 
and accurately. Like Major-General Stanley, 
in the comic opera, he has to rely a good 
deal on strategy, and a good deal on down- 
right native impudence. But whatever he 
relies on he generally obtains the facts. 

He has been known to ride to the scene 
of the accident dressed like one of the 
breakdown gang. He has been seen at 
night to slide down a cutting-side, at 



l86 Newspaper Reporti7ig. 

the imminent risk of breaking his neck, 
and alight almost on the funnel of the over- 
turned engine; he has had the audacity to 
pull the communication cord of the express 
-at a wayside station, get out of the window 
on the offside of the slowing train, and, 
while the engine-driver and guard have 
wondered what was amiss, started on his 
-way up " the six-foot " to the wrecked train, 
with its shattered carriages and maimed 
passengers, prolific in facts and "exciting 
incidents." 

An instance of a reporter's temerity and 
tact was afforded at a tolerably recent 
railway disaster at Penistone. It was essen- 
tial that he should get particulars of the 
accident without delay. But on his way 
to the scene he found to his disgust that 
he was in a slow train. The line was 
blocked with traffic, and the slow train 
was shunted at one point and at another 
until the pressman lost all patience, and 



Experiences and Adventures. 187 

decided to quit the carriage at any risk. 
He got on the footboard, leapt upon the 
line, and began the perilous walk to the 
place where the accident had occurred. It 
was a daring bit of pedestrianism, but he 
did it without mishap, traversing a tunnel, 
in going through which he was nearly 
whisked off his feet by a train. Emerging 
from the tunnel, his progress was barred 
by a policeman, who told him he had 
no business on the line. " I'm a reporter, 
and wish to get to the scene of the acci- 
dent," replied the newspaper man. " Well, 
you won't get this way," remarked the 
officer severely. " But I've walked a long way 
down the line — I've just come through that 
tunnel ! " continued the reporter. " What ! 
come through that tunnel ! God bless my 
soul ! it's a wonder you weren't cut to pieces ! 
You can go on," said the amazed officer; 
and then he muttered, "Them reporters is 
rum chaps, and no mistake." 



1 88 Newspaper Reporting. 

One of the most agreeable of reporting 
experiences is to travel to some country 
town to an important political meeting, 
take a turn with other reporters at a big 
speech, get it on the wire before mid- 
night, and then have a pleasant smoke 
and chat in some old-fashioned inn which 
was perhaps once a coaching-house, and to 
which weird stories still cling of haunted 
chambers and ghosts seen years ago by 
affrighted travellers through the film of 
whiskey. And one of the most detestable 
of reporting experiences is to attend a 
similar political meeting far away, and be 
obliged to get back the same night. It 
is head-aching, eye-straining work for the 
reporter to transcribe his shorthand notes, 
for instance, in the guard's van of a fish 
train, jolting over forty miles of railway, 
especially when he is expected at the office 
soon after midnight with his copy "written 
up," ready to hand in to the printers. 



Experiences and Adventures. 1 89 

Nor is it pleasant to be "lost in the 
snow." Such was a chief reporter's ex- 
perience in Derbyshire several years ago, 
and he will not soon forget it. After a heavy 
day's work — which included attending the 
police-court, reporting a Bible Society meet- 
ing, taking a note at a pharmaceutical con- 
ference, and writing a notice about a play 
at the theatre — he was quitting the office 
with a colleague. Both were fatigued; 
both eager for bed. But, like George 
Augustus Sala's hero in The Key of the 
Street^ there was no bed for them that 
night. The chief had just lit his pipe, and 
was going along the passage that led from 
the reporters' room to the street, when the 
messenger — doomed to "walk the night" 
with news parcels that come by train — came 
hurrying by. 

"What is it, Jim?" he asked. "Glad 
it's you, sir. Train off the line ten miles 
south — twenty killed, they say." The last 



1 90 Newspaper Reporting, 

train south had gone ; but in a few minutes 
the two reporters were in a hansom 
driving to the scene of the accident, 
hoping, to get information and be back 
again at the office in time for the town 
edition. It was a bitterly cold night. As 
they drove along the country road snow 
fell, and soon it drifted so thickly that it 
was quite impossible to discern the turn- 
pike boundary. The horse, bony as Don 
Quixote's, stumbled hopelessly on, so worn 
out that it could neither toss its head in 
derision nor give a solitary kick at the 
driver's inexhaustible flow of curses. The 
poor nag did its best; but after a wild, 
desperate movement of the legs, prompting 
the delusive hope that it was going to trot, 
the tired steed came to a sudden stop. 
" Get on — get on ! " urged the reporters, 
whose teeth were chattering and limbs 

shivering with cold. "It's no use," 

said the exasperated driver; "t' horse is 



Experiences and Adventures. 191 

dead beat, an' ar don't know t' road.' r 
The driver had trusted to their knowledge 
of the locality ; they had been relying on 
his frequent journeying along the highway 
— and were "lost in the snow." They 
managed to drag the horse and hansom 
to the four lane-ends close by. One of 
the reporters mounted the roof of the 
vehicle, and endeavoured, by a reckless 
sacrifice of wax matches (a score of which 
took one look at the wild night and then 
died in despair), to find the letters on the 
arms of the weather-beaten guide-post. But 
it was in vain. The howling wind had 
blown all the letters off — the worm-eaten 
woodwork bore not a vestige either of 
place-name or distance. 

The only thing they were certain about 
was the time. It was three o'clock in the 
morning. In another half-hour the formes 
in the daily newspaper office in the big 
town yonder would be on the machines, 



192 Newspaper Reporting, 

and the papers whirling into the folders, 
without any account of the " Fearful Railway 
Accident." The dilemma was annoying. 
There was nothing for it but to tramp on 
in the hope of reaching the scene of the 
accident and getting facts for a special 
edition. It was a struggle through the 
snowdrifts piled high in the narrow lane 
they now traversed, and along which they 
had been tempted by a locomotive's shriek 
in the distance. After half-an-hour's pedes- 
trian struggling, their hearts were gladdened 
by the outline of the railway track: then 
they met a muffled-up figure, covered with 
snow, a burly figure, safety-lamp in his 
hand, on his way to the pit. 

"Ar reckon there's been summat on V 
line," he said ; and he told them the station 
was a little to the right after turning the 
end of the lane. On they pressed, for- 
getting in their zeal for work the miserable 
experiences they had gone through. As 



Experiences and Adventures. 193 

they neared the station, they thought, such 
is the force of reporting habit, of the 
attractive heading they would give to the 
account of the disaster : — 

TERRIBLE RAILWAY COLLISION. 

An Express Wrecked. 

Twenty Passengers Killed and 
Many Injured. 

They listened, expecting to hear the 
shouts of the breakdown gang; looked for 
the huge fires that are lighted at night 
on embankment or in cutting whenever a 
serious accident occurs, and the work of 
rescue and clearing the line is not com- 
pleted." They pictured to themselves the 
great locomotive lying throbbing, helpless, 
on its side; the line twisted, and strewn 
with broken carriages ; the goods train 
shattered, knocked hither and thither by 
the tearing might of the express; the anxious, 

J 3 



194 Newspaper Reporting, 

tear-stained faces of friends ; the quickly 
moving groups of officials and ready helpers ; 
the doctors aiding the injured; and the 
sad scene in the farmhouse by the line-side 
where the dead were no doubt lying — father 
and son, mother and child, sent by the 
piteous crash into the silent land. 

Eagerly they entered the station. The 
lights were on " at danger," but the platform 
was deserted and the shed-like booking office 
in darkness. The big railway disaster was 
a myth. The accident was not worth a 
paragraph. Two trucks had jumped off the 
line — and the signalman was asleep ! 

One of the most amusing incidents con- 
nected with modern reporting concerns a 
prelate who is as robust in form as he is 
indefatigable in work. He went to open 
a church in a certain village. A reporter 
was sent to give an account of the open- 
ing services ; but the place was somewhat 
difficult to get at, and he did not reach 



Experiences and Adventures. 195 

the edifice until the dignitary had entered 
the pulpit. The church was crowded. The 
rustics listened with reverence to the 
preacher's words. The silence, except for 
the prelate's utterances, was intense. You 
could, to use an old saying, have heard a 
pin drop. The reporter was perplexed. His 
conscience told him he must not wait on 
ceremony. He must catch the next train 
back, or his journey would be useless ; and 
he could not well go without getting some 
information about the building. So he 
stood and pondered. Then he took out 
his book, wrote a note to the churchwarden 
sitting in the central aisle near the pulpit, 
and, beckoning to one of the village boys 
crowding about the church door, asked him 
to take the note "to the gentleman with 
the bald head," pointing to the church- 
warden. The note was simply a courteously 
worded missive asking the churchwarden 
for a few facts about the dimensions of the 



196 Newspaper Reporting. 

church and its cost — such a note as any 
reporter would have sent in a similar 
difficulty. The lad took the note and 
walked up the central aisle towards the 
churchwarden. But to his horror — his 
dismay — the reporter noticed that the boy 
wore clogs. Clank- — clank — clank went the 
lad up the aisle, making a fearful noise at 
every footstep. The congregation was aghast, 
everybody's eyes were on the confused young- 
ster tramping so loudly on sacred ground. 
Suddenly the prelate stopped his discourse. 
Sternly he looked at the sacrilegious lad 
— then glanced with scornful pity at v the 
injudicious reporter, and, in sonorous tones 
that penetrated to every part of the church, 
said : " Boy, boy ! go back, go back ! I 
do not blame you so much as the miserable 
man that sent you ! " 

The reporter has been in many em- 
barrassing situations. Only lately at Bow- 
Street, during a noted police case, the 



Experiences and Adventures. 197 

pressure was so great that several members 
of the Press had to be provided with seats 
in the dock. Two witnesses, asked to 
identify the persons concerned in the charge, 
pointed, without hesitation, to " the blushing 
reporters." At the Sheriff's Court, at York 
Castle, some years ago, a reporter was 
heartily hissed by a group of women. He 
happened to enter the court with the bar- 
rister who held the brief for the defendant in 
a breach of promise of marriage case, and 
the indignant females thought the guileless 
reporter was the faithless lover. 

Dr. Wordsworth, the late Bishop of 
Lincoln, succeeded, perhaps, in placing the 
reporter in the most embarrassing position 
of all. A gentleman of the Press went 
down from a northern daily to the cathe- 
dral city to report his lordship's charge. 
It was a long, dreary charge. The re- 
porter took notes of what he regarded as 
the most important passages, but even 



198 Newspaper Reporting* 

these notes, as the time went by and the 
charge droned on, assumed . formidable 
proportions. At last the note-taker gave 
up in despair, and resolved to rely on the 
bishop's copy of the charge, if he could 
only get it. Waiting patiently, he obtained 
an interview with the bishop. " I will give 
you a copy of the charge with pleasure," 
said Dr. Wordsworth, "if you will follow 
me to the house." Another eager reporter 
was standing near on the same quest. His 
lordship's crosier, in the meantime, had 
been taken in pieces, and deposited in a 
box somewhat resembling a small coffin. 
Suddenly the bishop turned to the press- 
men, and staggered them by the request 
that they should carry the coffin. They 
were too well bred to refuse. They each 
took hold of a handle, got somehow into 
the cathedral aisle, and walked as sedately 
as they could at the bishop's heels, though 
conscious of many a sly, humorous look 



Experiences and Adventures. 199 

from straggling clergymen and asthmatic 
vergers, one of whom made his exit from 
the fabric wildly, trying to stifle his 
coughing-laugh with a mouthful of his 
black gown. 

These stories (and they might easily be 
outstripped by the experience of nearly 
every daily newspaper reporter in the 
country) show that the reporter has many 
difficulties to encounter, and gets his share 
of hard work — that though he has many a 
glimpse of gaiety, he is also inured to toil. 

What will be expected of him in the 
next decade or two it is impossible to say, 
so restless is modern newspaper enterprise. 
It is not improbable that the shorthand 
writer will become of less value to the 
daily newspaper. It may be that verbatim 
reports of the proceedings in our law 
courts, of the transactions of public bodies, 
and even of political speeches, will become 
almost obsolete in the rush of modern 



200 Newspaper Reporting. 

life — that they will nearly die out because 
people have neither time nor inclination 
to read them. The law reporter, shaking 
off the sleepy quietude of the Chancery 
Court, may develop a new and startling 
phase of interviewing. The day may come 
when the gentlemen in the reporters' 
gallery of the House of Commons, except 
in great crises, will give little more than 
descriptive sketches of debates, and abandon, 
to a great extent, the present practice of 
reporting — of giving speech after speech, 
to the gratification of hon. members, but 
often to the disgust of the business man 
and the ordinary reader, and sometimes to 
the consternation of the political chief him- 
self. 

The reporter will probably be required 
to cultivate some special subject, in addi- 
tion to his wide, varied knowledge — to be- 
come a literary authority on commerce, or 
industry, or science, or social reform, or 



Experiences and Adventures. 201 

sport, and he may also be expected to 
develop into an artist-journalist. But what- 
ever is required of him will not be required 
in vain. He has, notwithstanding some 
errors, done his work well in the past; 
and with his capacity for toil, his undoubted 
talent, and imperturbable good-humour, he 
will, no doubt, be always able to hold his 
own in the battle of life. Indeed, his 
confidence is not bounded by the limits 
of this world — he views his prospects in 
the next with tolerable complacency ; for, 
not long ago, a pressman, asked solemnly, 
amid the fervid excitement of a revival 
gathering, the momentous question, "Are 
you saved?" replied, in a calm, confident 
tone, " Oh no ; I'm a reporter ! " 



VIII. 



Writings on Newspapers and 
Reporters. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

Writings on Reporters and 
Newspapers. 

HERE is a mass of literature 
referring to reporters, to the 
shorthand systems they use, to 
newspaper writers, and the various depart- 
ments of press work. Among these writings 
may be mentioned: — 




Gentleman's Magazine, vol. for the year 1740. 

V Tke Fourth Estate: — Contributions towards 

a history of newspapers, and the liberty 

of the press, by F. Knight Hunt (2 vols.). 



206 Newspaper Reporting. 

London : David Bogue, 86, Fleet Street, 
1850. 

* Andrews' History of British Journalism, 
from the Foundation of the Newspaper 
Press in England to the Repeal of the 
Stamp Act, with Sketches of Press 
Celebrities: — 2 volumes, published by 
Richard Bentley, London, in 1859. 



v The Newspaper Press : — Its origin, progress, 
and present position, by James Grant, 
author of Random Recollections, The Great 
Metropolis, and late editor of the Morning 
Advertiser (2 vols.). London : George 
Routledge & Sons, 187 1. 

The Metropolitan Weekly and Provincial 
Press, by the same writer. 

English Journalism, and the Men who have 



Reporters and Newspapers. 207' 

Made It, by Charles Pebody. London : 
Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co., 1882. 

Journalistic London: — Being a series of 
sketches of famous pens and papers of 
the day, by Joseph Hatton. London : 
Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & 
Rivington, Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet 
Street, 1882. 

Reference is also made to the debates 
in Parliament in D'Ewes' Journals of 
Queen Elizabeth; Rushworth's Historical 
Collections ; The Political State, a pamphlet 
published monthly in Queen Anne's time ; 
The Historical Register, issued in the reign 
of George I. ; May's Constitutional History 
of England ; Wade's British History ; and 
Green's Short History of the English People. 

A writer in the Journalist gives a list 
of references to the same subjects in 
magazine literature, and these include: — 



208 Newspaper Reporting. 

All the Year Round: — "My Newspaper,' 
June 25, 1864, vol. 11, p. 473: — A brief 
description of a visit to a newspaper 
office. 

"Press Telegrams," March 1, 1873, 
vol. 29, p. 365 : — Particulars of the 
method of transmitting press telegrams. 

Atlantic Monthly : — "Journalism and Jour- 
nalists," by F. B. Sanborn, July, 1874, 
vol. 34, p. 55 : — Power of the news- 
paper, origin of newspapers, modern 
American journalism, scholarship in 
modern journalism, women as journalists, 
rarity of able editors, bribing of journal- 
ists, literary style in newspapers, slander 
in newspapers, the aim of journalism. 

Belgravia : — " Writing for Money," by G. H. 
Guest, June, 1869, vol. 8, p. 573 : — 
Hard work of writers in periodicals, 
value of a name in authorship, writing 



Reporters and Newspapers, 209 

on distasteful subjects, writing when 

labouring under mental affliction. 

" English Journalism in 1832 and 1874," 
by T. H. S. Escott, Nov., 1875, 
vol. 28, p. 39 : — A. Fonblanque, Jour- 
nalism in the eighteenth century, politi- 
cal offices for journalists, influence of 
journalism on the dialect of ordinary 
life, party journalism, dulness of 
modern leaders. 

"Does Writing Pay?" probably by P. 
Fitzgerald, Jan., 1881, vol.43, p. 283 : — 
Getting subjects for essays, showering- 
in papers, value of establishment on 
a journal, turning travels to good 
profit, novel- writing, value' of having 
several irons in the fire, fraudulent 
publishers, verse-making not profitable, 
cost of printers' corrections. 

Blackwood : — " Journalists and Magazine- 
Writers," Jan., 1879, v °l* I2 5> P* 6q : — 

14 



210 Newspaper Reporting. 

Society journalism condemned, city 
. editors, financial weeklies, starting and 

editing magazines, the quarterly reviews. 

" Magazine- Writers," Feb., 1879, v °l- I2 5> 
p. 225 : — History of Blackwood' 's Maga- 
zine, signed articles in newspapers,* 
reviewing, magazine poetry, starting 
new magazines, illustrated magazines, 
religious magazines. 

" Readers," Aug., 1879, v0 ^ I2 6> P- 235 : — 
Different kinds of readers, account of 
the publication of a newspaper, morning 
newspaper trains, railway bookstalls, 
reviewing, reading in railway carriages, 
on shipboard, and on holidays. 

"Newspaper Offices," Oct., 1879, v °l- 
126, p. 472 : — Newspapers as com- 
mercial enterprises, newspaper offices 
as they used to be and as they are 
now, history of the leading London 
papers, Parisian newspapers, American 
newspapers, the Kolnische Zeitung. 



Reporters and Newspapers. 211 

British Quarterly :—" The Modern News- 
paper," April, 1872, vol. 55, p. 348:— 
Account of the growth of newspapers, 
sale of papers during Franco-German war, 
Smith's bookstalls, increased dependence 
on advertisements, Reuter's agency, de- 
terioration of reporting ability, evening 
papers virtually extinct, growth of pro- 
vincial press, the Press Association, 
special wires, penny-a-lining in London, 
cockneyism of London papers, comic and 
illustrated papers, colonial and continental 
papers. 

Chambers's Journal :—" How we get our 
Newspaper," Dec. 9, 1865, vol. 42, p> 
769 : — Description of the Times office, 
and account of the distribution of papers. 
"Our Leading Columns," July 20, 1867, 
vol. 44, p. 449 :— Leaders and leader- 
writers. 
"Scissors and Paste," Dec. 14, 1867, 



212 Newspaper Reporting. 

vol. 44, p. 785 : — Account of sub- 
editorial work and perplexities. 

"The Special Staff," Jan. n, 1873, vol. 
50, p. 17 : — The use of the telegraph by 
special correspondents. 

"Literary Work," June 7, 1879, vol. 56, 
P- 353 : — Increase of periodicals, course 
of a successful novel, international 
copyright. 

"A Newspaper Institute," June 21, 1879, 
vol. 56, p. 395 : — Account of a news- 
paper institute at Crewe. 

' 'Sub-Editing a London Newspaper," 
Oct. 18, 1879, v °l- 5 6 > P- 663 : — Duties 
of a sub-editor, police reports, prepara- 
tion of biographies. 

"Concerning Reporting," Jan. 15, 1881, 
vol. 58, p. 36 : — Shorthand not enough 
for reporting, qualifications of a reporter. 

" Literary Beginners," Jan. 29, 1881, vol. 
58, p. 65 : — Revision of articles, organi- 
sation of journalism. 



Reporters and Newspapers. 213 

" Curiosities of Journalism," Feb. 19, 
1 88 1, vol. 58, p. 123: — Inconsistency 
in newspapers, dressing up news, libel 
actions, smartness in journalistic enter- 
prise, feats of interviewing, fighting 
editors. 

"Printers' Blunders," June n, 1 881, vol. 
58, p. 381 : — Several instances given. 

Contemporary Review: — "The Morality of 
Literary Art," by H. A. Page, June, 
1867, vol. 5, p. 161 : — Relations of art 
and morality, law of truth in art, sympathy 
in literary art, reserve in literary art. 
"Anonymous Journalism," by J. B. 
Kinnear, July, 1867, vol. 5, p. 324 : 
— Anonymous advice not otherwise 
valued, lack of responsibility at pre- 
sent, recklessness encouraged by anony- 
mous journalism, signed writing would 
elevate the profession, anonymity in other 
branches of literature, anonymity in art 



214 Newspaper Reporting. 

and book criticism, obstacles to a re- 
form, comparison with the French press. 

"Parliamentary Reporting," June, 1877, 
vol. 30, p. 165 : — The kind of reporting 
needed in Parliament, verbatim reports 
not needed, difficult speakers to report, 
cooked reports, qualifications of re- 
porter. 

"The Newest Thing in Journalism," 
Sept, 1877, vol. 30, p. 678:— News- 
papers are too much with us, origin 
of society journalism, society journalism 
denounced. 

"Government by Journalism," by W. T. 
Stead, May, 1886, vol. 49, p. 653 : — 
Comparison of influence of press with 
that of Parliament and platform, the 
journalist as a ruler, low ideal of the 
journalistic profession, advertisements 
the Achilles' heel, sensational journalism, 
modifications needed in the law of libel. 

"The Future of Journalism," by W. T. 



Reporters and Newspapers, 215 

Stead, Nov., 1886, vol. 50, p. 663 : — 
Impersonal journalism is effete, editors' 
ignorance of public opinion, newspaper 
should be in touch with all grades of 
society, scheme suggested for increas- 
ing the information and influence of 
a newspaper. 

Cornhill: — "Journalism," July, 1862, vol. 6, 
p. 52 : — Newspapers as commercial un- 
dertakings, leading articles, anonymous 
journalism defended, crotchets in jour- 
nalism, staff of leader-writers, duties of 
editor and sub-editor, special correspon- 
dents, London correspondents. 
"Our Rulers — Public Opinion," March, 
1870, vol. 2i, p. 288 : — The journalist 
v. M.P., advantages of anonymous 
writing, letters to the editor in the 
dull season, true function of the press 
with regard to public opinion, gushing 
newspapers, cynical newspapers. 




216 Newspaper Reporting. 

" The Casuistry of Journalism," Aug., 
1873, vol. 28, p. 198 : — Moral canons 
guiding journalists, comparison of jour- 
nalists with lawyers, party v. independent 
newspapers, papers in which conscien- 
tious journalists should not write. 

"The French Press," Oct., 1873, vol. 28, 
p. 411 : — The French press under 
Louis XIV. and XV., French journal- 
ism has never been disciplined, inac- 
curacy of the French press, dislike of 
literary criticism in France, personalities 
of the French press. 

"Parisian Journalists of To-Day," Dec, 
1873, vol. 28, p. 715: — Sketches of 
prominent Parisian journalists, with 
gossip about their newspapers. 

"Authors for hire," June, 1881, vol. 43, 
p. 684 : — Grounds on which copyright 
rests, authorship begins where journal- 
ism ends, prize essays and poems, 
writing for money. 



Reporters and Newspapers. 217 

Dark Blue: — "Periodical Literature in 

India," by Col. W. F. B. Laurie, 1872, 

vol. 3, pp. 506 and 628. 

"Literary Hacks," by E. A. Bendall, 

July, 1872, vol. 3, p. 607 : — Contempt 

implied in the word "hack," writing 

for money, abilities needed by the 

hack. 

Dublin Review: — "The Religious Press," 
July, 1 88 1, vol. 6, p. 1 : — Too much 
newspaper reading, account of organs of 
various religious bodies, quack advertise- 
ments in religious papers. 

Dublin University Magazine : — " The British 
Newspaper : the Penny Theory," March, 
1863, vol. 61, p. 359 : — Eulogy of the 
press, the Times of 1798, origin of adver- 
tising, influence of press in case of Lan- 
cashire distress, market now glutted with 
papers, evil effects of stamp duty repeal 



218 Newspaper Reporting. 

sensational papers, the penny paper will 
not be permanent, disasters in newspaper 
publishing, cheap papers impossible in the 
provinces, function of provincial papers, 
American journalism. 
"Literaria," by W. T. Dobson, Aug., 
1873, vol. 82, p. 153 : — Popular igno- 
rance of printing processes, authors' 
corrections, examples of careless style, 
indecipherable MSS., paper-sparing 
authors, results of errors in punctuation, 
printers' blunders, duties of the reader, 
hurry in production of newspapers, 
reporting speeches of public men. 
See also University Magazine, a continua- 
tion of the Dublin University. 

Fortnightly Review: — "The Morality of 
the Profession of Letters," by R. L. 
Stevenson, April, 1881, vol. 35, p. 513 : 
— Salary not the first question, writing 
does great harm or good, falsehood in 



Reporters and Newspapers, 219 

journalism, writer must be true to the 
fact and have a good spirit in treatment, 
sympathy needed by a writer, no writing 
should be done in a hurry. 

Fraser : — "Editors and Newspaper-Writers 
of the Last Generation," Feb. and May, 
1862, vol. 65, pp. 169 and 595 : — Sketches 
of Franklyn, Finnerty, J. Taylor, D. 
Stuart, J. Black, Cobbett, T. Barnes, J. 
Murray, Mackintosh, R. C. Fergusson, 
Spankie, J. Adolphus, etc., special corre- 
spondents in 1809 and 1823. 
"Politics and the Press," July, 1875, 
vol. 92, p. 41 : — Unique position of 
the Times, the Times as a theological 
teacher, Disraeli and the Standard, 
Gladstone and the Daily Telegraph, 
independent v. party journalism, 
sectarianism of the Daily News, power 
of the press in social questions, French 
v. English journalism, connection of 



220 Newspaper Reporting. 

English politicians with journalism, 
characteristics of the London dailies. 

"Modern Newspaper Enterprise," June, 
1876, vol. 93, p. 700 : — Past journalism 
inferior to present, papers in 1864 
v. 1876, the telegraph in modern 
journalism, Reuters agency, influence 
of war of 1870 on journalism, war 
correspondence, enterprise of modern 
London and provincial papers, inter- 
viewing, journalistic rivalry, London 
correspondence, weather charts, illus- 
tration of dailies, web printing 
machines, rapidity of stereotyping. 

"Russel, of the Scotsman," by H. G. 
Graham, Sept., 1880, vol. 102, p. 301 : 
— Sketch of Russel, rival editors of 
country papers, high pressure of modern 
journalism. 

Gazette de France: — "Le Journalisme en 
Angleterre," by Victor de Ternant : — A 



Reporters and Newspapers. 221 

series of fifty-six articles, from March 7, 
1885, to July 27, 1886, forming a his- 
tory of the British and Irish press, from 
the earliest to the present times. 

Gentleman 's Magazine: — "The £ s. d. of 
Literature," Nov. and Dec, 1874, vol. 13, 
new series, pp. 575 and 714: — The popu- 
lar idea of literature as a profession, ano- 
nymous journalism denounced, amounts 
paid for copyright, patronage period of 
literature, payment for history and fiction, 
payment for journalism and periodical 
writing, payment for plays, literary men 
and the Civil Service. 
"Table Talk," Jan. and Feb., 1875, 
vol. 14, new series, pp. 130 and 264 : — 
Provision made by newspapers for 
disabled writers, rate of payment in 
Chambers's Journal. 
"Transmitting the War News," Feb., 
1875, v °l- *4> new series, p. 213 :— 



222 Newspaper Reporting. 

Ashantee war correspondence, news- 
paper enterprise. 

" The Physiology of Authorship," March, 
J875, vol. 14, new series, p. 326 : — 
An account of the methods of com- 
position adopted by various distin- 
guished authors. 

"Parliament and the Press," Aug., 1880, 
p. 242 : — Reporting arrangements in 
the two Houses, provincial papers and 
parliamentary reports, estimate of the 
proportion of reports that is really read. 

Little Folks : — " How a Daily Newspaper 
is Produced," July, 1882, vol. 16, p. 22 : — 
A description of the usual routine of 
work in the production of a daily news- 
paper, specially written for young people. 

London ■ Quarterly :— " American News- 
papers," July, 187 1, vol. 36, p. 390 :— 
Sketch of the growth of American journal- 



Reporters and Newspapers. 223 

ism, character of the New York press, 
personalities of the American press, want 
of a comic press in America, religious 
press • in America, Associated Press 
Agency, influence of the newspaper 
press. 

"British Journalism," April, 1872, vol. 
38, p. 37 : — Review of Grant's History 
of Journalism^ sketches of the growth 
of the leading London dailies, law 
of libel, reporting of parliamentary 
debates, postage of newspapers, steam 
printing, use of the telegraph, Press 
Association and Central News, influence 
of provincial journals, party spirit, 
excessive space given to sport, diffi- 
culty of getting advertisements. 

London Society : — " Newspaper Editors and 
Political Writers," June, 1863, vol. 3, 
p. 518: — Difficulty of defining a news- 
paper, origin of newspapers, London 



224 Newspaper Reporting, 

correspondence, the stamp-duty, provincial 
papers in Pitt's time, milder tone of 
modern newspapers. 

Macmillan: — "Anonymous Journalism," by 
T. Hughes, Dec, 1861, vol. 5, p. 157 : — 
An attack on anonymous journalism, 
with incidental comments on the French 
press and the Saturday Review. 
" Genius and Discipline in Literature," 
by D. Masson, Dec, 1862, vol. 7, 
p. 83 : — Variety of literary activity, 
discipline in authorship, petty untruth- 
fulness in current literature, untruthful 
criticism, animosities in religious jour- 
nals, newspaper dogmatism, descriptive 
literature. 
" The Byways of Bookmaking," by H. S. 
Edwards, Sept., 1876, vol. 34, p. 457 : 
— Literary plagiarism, grotesque mis- 
takes in translation, curious cataloguing, 
reporters' and printers' blunders. 



Reporters and Newspapers. 225 

"J. T. Delane," Jan., 1880, vol. 41, 
p. 267. 

" Our London Correspondent," by T. 
Wemyss Reid, May, 1880, vol. 42, 
p. 18 : — London correspodents of the 
past v. present, a defence of society 
journals, special wires of provincial 
papers, Delane and the Times, in- 
genuity of former London correspon- 
dents, journalists and the lobby of 
the House of Commons, importance of 
the modern London correspondent. 

National Review : — " The Conservative Pro- 
vincial Press," July, 1885, vol. 5, p. 634: — 
Inferiority of the Conservative provincial 
press, folly of local magnates in dealing 
with the press, two great errors in starting 
a paper, need of adequate machinery, 
difficulty of making evening papers pay, 
editor should be allowed independence, 
interference of shareholders in the man- 

*5 



226 Newspaper Reporting. 

agement, first object a good supply of 

news, impossibility of making a paper pay 

immediately. 

"The Establishment of Newspapers," 
Aug., 1885, vol. 5, p. 818:— Sugges- 
tions as to the building and manage- 
ment of a newspaper office, the selection 
of the staff, control of the cash, etc., 
with information as to the cost of 
starting and managing a newspaper. 

"The Conservative Provincial Press," 
by H. B. Reed, Aug., 1885, vol. 5, p. 
S66 : — The purchase of effete weeklies, 
Radical tendencies of news agencies, 
want of good Conservative London 
Letters. 

Nineteenth Century: — "How a Provincial 
Paper is Managed," by Arnot Reid, 
Sept., 1886, vol. 20, p. 391 :— The com- 
parative influence and cost of a provincial 
and a London daily, payment for war 



Reporters and Newspapers. 227 

correspondence, a statistical abstract of 
the contents of five leading dailies, how 
leaders are written and news is obtained, 
individual responsibility and anonymous 
journalism. 

" Twenty-four Hours in a Newspaper 
Office," by Arnot Reid, March, 1887 
vol. 21, p. 452 : — The organisation 
of a daily paper, the duties of the 
members of the staff in relation to 
each other, journalism and health, the 
freedom of journalism. 

North American Review : — " A Profane 
View of the Sanctum," by M. J. Savage, 
Aug., 1885, vol. 141, p. 137 : — The ideal 
newspaper, history of the newspaper, the 
newspaper as a public conscience, editorial 
infallibility, partnership of news corre- 
spondents, fondness for peppery gossip, 
composition of sermons by reporters 
interviewing, writing against one's beliefs, 



228 Newspaper Reporting. 

disgusting details in newspapers, news- 
papers a cause of pessimism, making 
money the end of a newspaper. 

This list of the works on journalists and 
journalism is by no means complete; but 
it will suffice to indicate how interesting is 
the topic. 

Book-lovers leaning more to the rise 
and development of shorthand than to 
newspaper enterprise will find in the Bailey 
collection of shorthand books, in the 
Manchester Reference Library, a wide field 
of knowledge, in which they can roam 
unfettered, making delightful acquaintance 
with much curious literature, and learning 
something, too, of a remote time when the 
manners and customs of the people were 
very different from those of our own day ; 
yet of a time when the English mind, 
awaking and throbbing with new possi- 
bilities, was on the threshold of modern 



Reporters and Newspapers. 229 

invention and scientific research, of won- 
drous industrial activity and trade develop- 
ment, of wider and truer social reform, 
and of greater political freedom. 



Index. 



INDEX 



Acta Diurna, 6, 13, 14. 

^Emilius the Consul, 7. 
Ambition, Feminine, 115. 
"Anybody killed?" 171. 
Armada, Spanish, 16. 
Augsburg news-sheets, 14. 

Axon, Mr., jun. : description of Bailey collection in 
Manchester Reference Library, 132-137. 



Bellamy, the housekeeper of St. Stephen's, 60. 

his old port, 61. 

Biggar, Mr. ; his caprice with regard to strangers, 
90-92. 

his chuckle, 93. , 

Black, John, and his tem\ >er, 63. 
Black Rod, Usher of, 40, 96. 



234 Index. 

" Boy, boy! go back, go back ! " 196. 
British Journalism, History of, 45. 
British Museum, 17. 
Burleigh, Lord, 16. 
Bute Administration, 41. 
Butter, Nathaniel, 17-20. 



Caesar, Julius, 12. 
Catiline; his conspiracy, 7. 

his fate, 122. 

Cato, 7. 

Cave, Edward, 12, 33-37, 94. 

his ingenuity in reporting, 36. 

his abject apology, 40. 

Chinaman, A clever, 124. 

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 26, IOO. 

Cicero, 7, 10. 

"Compositors, pressmen, correctors, blackers, and 

devils," 43. 
Contempt of comments, 25. 
Copponius accused of poisoning, II. 
Cornwall, "My lord" in, 18. 
Correcting, Push on with, 26. 
Cortes, 121. 
Courant, Daily, 24. 
Criticism, Amusing examples of dramatic, 61, 

62. 
Crosby, Brass, and the Sergeant-at-Arms, 44. 



Index. 235 

Daily News, 24. 

Damocles, The sword of, 42. 

Death a relief: Ceesar's speech, 123, 124. 

Dedication, A flattering, 126-128. 

Demiphon, The pirate, 9. 

D'Ewes, Symonds, 33. 

Dickens, Charles ; his experience in noting down 

the music of " the parliamentary bagpipes," 86. 

how he won his spurs as a reporter, 87. 

his reporting experiences in the country, 165- 

168. 
Dictation, Versatile, 54. 
Disraeli, 92. 
Drake, 16. 



Editor, Whimsical description of, 72. 

Editors who were reporters, 152. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 16. 

Endymion, 31. 

Exercise, mental, Dual, 53. 

Expedient, A strange, 39. 



" Failed, Is it true you've ? " 184. 
Finnerty, Peter, and his love of frolic, 67. 

in prison, 70. 

his grim prophecy, and its fulfilment, 7] 

Fire on Mount Coelius, 9. 

Forbes, Captain, and his threat, 42. 



236 Index. 

Fray at the Hog-in-Armour Tavern, 8. 
Frobisher, 16. 

Funeral, Frank description of, 12. 
Furniss. H., 113. 



" Galley, The," Incidents and traditions of, 47-49. 

Gifted men in, 51. 

The old and noted occupants of, 72. 

Fierce attack on pressman in, 79. 

O'Connell's attempt to clear, 82. 

crowded with pressmen, 94. 

Tickets of admission to the, 94. 

Plan of; giving the names of the newspapers 

represented there, 95. 

corps : what it consists of, 96, 97. 

A " turn *' in ; giving the names on a staff, the 

time of each "take," and the instructions as to 

length of speeches, 99. 

Note-taking in : light and heavy, 99, IOO. 

A gallery man's description of, 104-IIO. 

A lady reporter seeks admission to, 116. 

Every variety of shorthand in, 12 1. 

Some noted men, 146-150. 

Men who have become M.P.'s, 150. 

Gazetteer, The, 13. 

Gentleman's Magazine, 5, 34 

Gladstone : if he gets up, 100. 

the scene when he introduced his Home Rule 

Bill, 102. 



Index, 237 

Gladstone spoke for three hours and a half, 102. 

" first person verbatim," 103. 

his voice restorative : the pomatum pot, 104, 

105. 
Glasgow Herald, 24. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 49. 
Guthrie, the historian, 35, 37. 



Hansard's Debates, 96-98. 

Hartington, Lord, 92. 

Hawke, Edward, 13. 

Hepburn, W., 113. 

Heron, Robert : a life desperate and sad, 63-65. 

House of Commons, 12. 

That odious, 31. 

Privately taking notes in, 34. 

Proceedings of, 40. 

A member expelled from the, 41. 

Called to the bar of the, 43. 

Angry debate in : the House and the city, 44. 

The Press looking in, 45. 

the old House destroyed by fire, 77. 

Reporting to-day in the, 77. 

Conversion came slowly to the, 78. 

Strangers in the, 84. 

Standing orders of the, and " newspaper re- 
porters," 88-90. 

Power to exclude reporters from, 93. 

An ordinary night in the, 98. 



238 Index. 

House of Commons : the time it meets, 99. 

A big night in, 102-104. 

Hunt, Leigh, 54. 



Invasion, A novel, 114. 



Johnson, Dr., 5, 41. 

his opinion of newspapers, 5. 

his reports of Parliament, 37-39. 

only once in " The Gallery," 39. 

Journalism, English, 60. 
Journalist, First English, 17. 
Journalists, Women, 1 14. 
Junius, Letters of, 41. 



Latin festivals, 9. 
Leeds Mercury, 24. 
Legislators, Prejudice of, 32. 
Licinius the Consul, 8. 
Lilliput, Debates in, 37, 94. 
Lobby-man, The, III, 112. 

Statesmen and the, 1 12. 

London, The great fire in, 21-24. 

a noted charter, 44. 

London Gazette, 21. 
London Magazine, 40. 
Lords, House of, 13, 40, 96. 



Index. 239 



Lovat, Lord, 40. 

Lucy, H. W., 112, 152. 

"Lynching, Your reporter deserves," 165. 



Macaulay, Lord ; his championship of reporters, 77, 

78. 
Macedonian war, 9. 

Manchester, Breaking away from a clerkship in, 55. 
Manchester Guardian, 24, 95, 158. 
Marchmont, Lord, 13, 42. 
Marriage, Curious notice of, 33. 
McCarthy, Justin ; his career as a journalist, 150- 

152. 
Megalesian plays, 10. 
Mercurie, English, 17. 
Metellus, The trial of, 163. 

a shorthand writer's sympathy for him, 164. 

Miller, printer of Lon on Evening Post, taken into 

custody, 43. 

and his counter move, 44. 

Modern daily newspaper, The contents of, 25. 
Morning Chronicle, 49, 50. 

where the money came from to start it, 60, 61. 

Charles Dickens on its staff, 87. 



Newspaper, First English, 17. 

First daily, 24. 

the reporter its great help. 26, 27. 



240 Index. 

Newspapers, Sixteenth-century, 14. 
News-writer, 16. 

Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, 55. 
North Briton, 41. 
Note-taking, Surreptitious, 35. 

Obituaries, Premature, 183. 

O'Conuell ; his defiance of reporters, and their 

refusal to report him, 82-85. 
Orators, Famous, 31. 

Paragraphs, Two remarkable, 20. 
Parliament, The reporter in, 31. 

Debates in, 33. 

The privileges of, 34. 

Penalties of reporting in, 43. 

losing its hostility to pressmen, 77- 

Better days — or rather nights — for reporters 

in, $7. 

Opposition to the Press dead in, 93. 

Parliamentary Companion, Dod's, 87. 

" Parliamentary reporters," HO, III. 

Parliaments, A Diary of Two, 90. 

Paulus the Consul, 10. 

Pencil, Knights of, 71. 

Penny-a-liner, 17. 

Perry, James, and his revolution of reporting, 54. 

his efforts to obtain employment, and ultimate 

success, 57-59, 78. 



Index. 241 

Phonography, 138. 

Efforts to learn, 139. 

not to be lightly thrown aside, 140. 

Pitt, Mr. Ernest, 113. 

Play, A stage-, 13. 

Potato, The Irish : a marvellous speech, 68, 69. 

Press, License of the, IT. 

Exciting time for the, 41. 

The, and the Bar, 80, 81. 

Association, 113. 

Progress of the, 122. 

Pressmen in the provinces ; experienced chiefs, 

158, 159- 
Prices, New York, 26. 
Printing in England, 4. 
Privilege, Breach of, 40. 
Proby nicknamed " King Porus," 73. 
Putting off a daughter's marriage, 10. 

Quaker, The, and the "galley man's" joke, 66. 

Radcliffe, another noted parliamentary reporter, 52, 53. 
Reporter, his duties, 2 

Antipathy to, 32. 

Obloquy of hon. members to, 42. 

Some qualities necessary to, 51. 

and the public, 84, 85. 

his work, 143. 

Shorthand by no means only acquirement for, 

145. 

16 



242 Index. 

Reporter on the provincial daily, 153. 

first experience "in the ring," 155. 

anxiety and toil, 156. 

extraordinary variety of his toil, 156, 157. 

sometimes an unwelcome visitor, 157. 

must be robust in body and mind, 158. 

striving for fame, 160. 

what he sees and does, 168-171. 

what he will be required to do in the future; 

the prospect of special work, and the necessity 
of special knowledge, 199-201. 

Reporter's Diary, The Chief: a peep at a day's 
engagements, 154. 

Reporter's, Mexican, 121. 

who have risen, 146. 

Some experiences and adventures of, 161. 

versatility, 172. 

Amusing errors of : Jeremy Taylor — A funny 

coat — Bishop Fraser and city Arabs — The jaun- 
diced eye — Harcourt's farce — A frozen goddess 
— The roaring loom — The Bombay circus — A 
Greek goat — That poetic bishop— Norman blood 
— Scantily attired police — Breaking heads — A 
remarkable warrior, 172-183. 

and railway accidents — Must get the facts — 

Audacity and disguises — "I've just come through 
that tunnel," 185-187. 

and night travelling from meetings, 188. 

lost in the snow, 189-194. 

— — and the bishop's crosier, 197-199, 



Index. 243 

Reporting in olden time, 3. 

in China, 6. 

in Rome, 7-14. 

Absurd notion about, 50. 

at the close of the eighteenth century, 63. 

Work of, 98. 

Modern system of, 101. 

in short turns a great political speech, 

IS4-I56. 
Round-robin, A memorable reporters', 83. 

Scapula, M., before the judges, 8. 

Science nowadays, 19. 

Scotsman, The, 24. 

Sea-serpent, The, 14. 

" Sempronius," the strolling player, 55. 

Senate, A famous speech in the, 122. 

Sharp work, 26. 

Sheet of news, First modern, 15. 

Sheridan ; his defence of the parliamentary reporters, 

79- 

" Shorthand, Men who wrote," 62. 

A gossip about, 119. 

Impossible to report Gladstone without, 121. 

no new-fangled notion, 122. 

Roman notarii an , 122. 

a story from the Arabic, 124. 

on the Continent, 125. 

in England : the best-known systems, 125, 

126. 



244 Index. 

Shorthand, Bright's book on, 126. 

his advice how to learn, 128. 

Similarity in old and new, 129. 

Pitman's system of, 129, 137-140. 

Bailey collection of books on, 130-137. 

Fulsome rhymes to authors of, 131-134. 

Taylors and Gurney's, 137. 

Possible new system of, 140. 

Taking speeches verbatim in, 140. 

"Bobby" Lowe walking away from, 141. 

admirable training, 145. 

Siege of Jericho, 4. 

Speaker's eye, The, 122. 

Spurs, Battle of, 14. 

Standard, The, 24. 

Standard, The red, 9. 

Sub-editors at work, 25. 

Summary writers and managers of reporting corps, 

97, 98. 
Supple, Mark: the "big-boned Irish reporter " calls 
upon the Speaker for a song, 65, 66. 

Tertinius the ^Edile, 8. 
Thunderstorm on Mount Palatine, 8. 
Time, A trying, 155. 
Times, The, 24, 94, 95. 
Tower, The, 41. 

Venetians and Turkey, 15. 



Index. 245 

Venetians, and their gazzettas, 15. 

Venice in her glory, 4. 

War, The hazard of: Russell and Forbes, 165. 

Ward, Leslie, 113. 

Weekly Newes, 18. 

"When news doth come," 19. 

Whig dogs, The, 40. 

Wilkes, 41. 

Winnington, Sir Thomas, 12. 

" Woodfall, Memory : " a prince among reporters, 

49-51- 

his endurance and retentive memory, 52. 

Woman : her new avocations, 1 14-1 18. 

twisting the House " round her little finger," 

117, 118. 
Writers, Some distinguished, 61. 
Writings on newspapers and reporters (including 

references in magazine literature), 203-229. 

Yorkshire Post, 24. 



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